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by snvzz 1269 days ago
>on DAT digital tapes, which are now in the process if being digitised.

DAT tapes are, as you mention, already storing digital data to begin with. Rather than "digitised", the data should be copied to modern storage as-is.
2 comments
justsomehnguy 1268 days ago
My guess (never worked with DAT) is what they have them in audio format, not DDS, which is digital but...

Judging on some cursory search[0] the only way to transfer the audio is to hook the drive through S/PDIF and play the whole tape. Looks like the ability to treat audio as the data (similar to the way we can treat AudioCDs as just a data disk filled with PCM) is rare and not quite the official [1]

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20071007220855/http://homepage.n...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20071102094856/http://web.ncf.ca...

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snvzz 1268 days ago
The drives with DDS support might be rare, but they're the only correct way to extract audio for preservation.

Open Source software exists[0] for the purpose.

0. https://github.com/andrew-taylor/read_dat

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justsomehnguy 1268 days ago
The other way - a DDS drive with DAT support.

Anyway, you now need to acquire such drive, get to @jesprenj institution, tell them they are doing it wrong, threw out the current setup, replace the drive and the 'recording' station....

With a 30 y.o. tech which is obsolete for 20 years it's all.. questionable.

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jesprenj 1267 days ago
I was told they are capturing digital data. But I have no idea how, I was just trying to make sense of the error stream coming from the hacked drive.

Next time I'll check if they use SPDIF or what. But the drive is a consumer-grade Sony. Shame I didn't take note of the model.

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jesprenj 1267 days ago
When I was there, I saw that they played the tape at regular speed, not slower or faster. The drive's time counter was steadily increasing.
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jesprenj 1268 days ago
Reading the quoted sentence really is weird (:
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