[lb1lf]

-I had (and have, though it isn't used much these days) a Sony PCM-M1 ultraportable DAT deck in the late nineties. Wonderful for recording live gigs. It was, if memory serves, the exact same unit as the consumer counterpart - TCD-D100 - except the latter lacked the 44.1/48kHz sample rate selector - it was 48kHz only. (Oh, and on the M1 you could tell it to ignore the SCMS system, allowing only one digital generation of copying.)

The going theory at the time was that Sony, being big in content production, didn't want consumer DAT units being able to make bit perfect copies of CDs.

Good times. Reminds me I ought to bring out the box of DAT tapes and transfer them to my computer soon. In latter years, I've simply listened to them or at the very least fast-forwarded through the tapes a couple of times a year to minimize the risk of the tape sticking to itself.