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by justsomehnguy 1265 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...
2 comments
snvzz 1265 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 1264 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With a 30 y.o. tech which is obsolete for 20 years it's all..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 1263 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 1263 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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