OT - Salvage a bad DAT - Possible?

[soundsurfr]

Hey folks. I have several DAT masters from years ago that I wanted to transfer to CD for posterity. Unfortunately, when I went to play them back, I found that a couple of them were unplayable. They would either give me sporadic digital noise or lose tracking or not play at all, but the source material is there - I can hear it when I hit fast forward or reverse with the play head on.

I tried playing it on a friend's DAT and it did the same thing. Does anyone know of a way to extract the source material?

[8mmOverdose]

awhile back someone posted here about wanting to bounce their pt mixes to DAT. i chimed in and basically said that DAT sucks, for the EXACT reason that sounsurfr has now run into. i worked at a duplication house and often had to transfer old DAT tapes to cd, many of which had been improperly stored and would do exactly what soundsurfr is talking about.

sometimes fast forwarding and rewinding several times would help, but switching to a different DAT machine never worked for me. we had 3 of them there and one at my studio.

my guess is that much like with analog tape, DATs just gets sticky when they are old or stored improperly. i know you can "bake" analog reels and usually get one more pass out of them, and i think there is some sort of goop you can use too. but as far as DATs, well i never did find an answer for that problem, and i actually still have old ones of mine that won't transfer without glitching.

so sorry soundsurfr, i have no solution for ya, just a bump.

[Bastiaan]

All i can think of is to do several playbacks, and copy/paste the results back together in ptle. Also clean the dat's heads between each run. If you have access to a professional dat-machine...use it. They usually have better quality heads and tracking.

Backing could have good results, but only do that as a last resort. Maybe its a good thing to find some restoration services, or give a call to a big radio-station. They have to deal with that stuff too, and maybe they can help you somehow.

[8mmOverdose]

Originally posted by Bastiaan:
All i can think of is to do several playbacks, and copy/paste the results back together in ptle.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">i'm just bumping again, but my DATs glitch in the exact same spot every time so unfortunately this method wont help me. i am using a (recently serviced) tascam DA 40, so i dont think a better machine will help me either. [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

i think its time to get ahold of quantegy or anther DAT manufacturer.

[Bastiaan]

I gave the advise to seek help from a radiostation or postproductionhouse. I did theis because i knowthey suffer from the same problems. I myself work at a big video postproduction facility in the netherlands, and we also have the national archives. The guys at that department know everything about restoring stuff, and they also have the equipment for it. I unfortunatly cant offer that as a service for you, but i am sure there are places like that in the USA.


Good luck!

[Bastiaan]

Another idea. I have had problems with bad videotapes that couldnt be played normally anymore. But i could play them if i shuttled the tapes at +100 speed. Then there is not an exact lock, but maybe it will work. If you try that, make sure you listen to the analog outputs as well as the digital outputs of the dat-recorder.

[8mmOverdose]

Originally posted by Bastiaan:
I gave the advise to seek help from a radiostation or postproductionhouse.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">yeah but they'd probably want to charge me for the service! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] well i guess its free to just ask them about it! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[soundsurfr]

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions.

Most of the time mine glitch in the same place also, so the cut and paste method probably won't help - although it did with one of them. I haven't tried shuttling them back and forth a few times, so that could be a possibility. And I'll clean the heads carefully before I try again. I'm using a Tascam DA-30, by the way. I also tried it on a portable DAT player and a Sony deck. No luck.

I'll try everything I can, and if something works for me, I'll post it.

[Chris Cavell]

All you can do is keep trying different machines. Just like a vcr, tracking is different form machine to machine. One thing that might help is fast forwarding and rewinding through the entire tape before trying to listen.