The DAT standard (digital audio tape), created in 1987, is a digital
recording format which offers 3 hours of digital sound on a tape half the
size of a cassette analogue tape, with the same format as a compact disk or
CD (44.1 Khz sampling frequency and 16 bits)
It is the only consumer recording standard, not using data compression.
This means that the entirety of the signal is retained. The copy of a CD is
a real clone. Both DCC tape or Minidisc use data compression. The quality of
DAT format is such that professional studios very quickly adopted.
It was soon become the digital standard for recording. Moreover, DAT
offers a comfort of use infinitely higher than that of an analogue tape.
Thus, indexing of the tape and rewinding are extremely fast (50 seconds for
a 120 minute tape) and facilitates the location and access to any place on
the DAT tape. Purity of sound has two ambassadors: the CD and the DAT.
DAT functions with 3 sampling frequency
48 Khz 44.1Khz 32 Khz
In the case of the 48 Khz sampling, it is possible to obtain a quality of
recording higher than CD. There also exists, on the majority of the
machines, a LP mode (long play) which makes it possible to double the
duration of recording, more than 6 hours on a 180 minutes tape. The DAT tape is smaller than a traditional cassette tape and uses a metal
surface. The tapes are available in durations going from 15 minutes to 180
minutes. Many companies manufacture these tapes like Sony.
