They don't make 'em like that any more: Sony DTC-700 audio DAT player/recorder

Summary

They don’t make ’em like that any more: Sony DTC-700 audio DAT player/recorder Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: DAT players were fantastic. They offered all the advantages of an audio cassette, but with the sound quality of a CD. The compact audio cassette was a marvellous invention, in its own way; but this technology struggled to provide audio fidelity that would satisfy discerning listeners. Its frequency response was limited, and the unavoidable background hiss was very obvious in quiet environments. Still, in the 1970s audio cassettes were the way most people listened to music, and I still have a stack of them. One thing that made cassettes so popular was that you could record on them. Setting aside the legal issues, you could record from FM radio, or from vinyl records, or even from microphones. It was easy to make ‘mix tapes’ of you favourite tracks, and share them with friends. Cassettes were everywhere – from portable players like the Walkman, to serious hardware in hi-fi racks; they were even in cars. There were shops that sold nothing but cassettes, and they sold by the million. Serious hi-fi enthusiasts, however, listened to vinyl records or FM radio. There were good-quality cassette decks, but the `audiophile’ crowd embraced them with reluctance, if at all. Still, even the most ardent hi-fi junkie couldn’t deny the usefulness of cassettes. What we needed was something that could record high-quality sources, with no loss of fidelity. That’s where DAT, ‘digital audio tape’ comes in. DAT offered digital recording, in a range of qualities, the highest of which exceeded that of CD. If you wanted to record from a CD, you could just connect the CD transport’s digital output to the DAT’s digital input, and away you go. Well, maybe – more this subject later. Of course, most DAT units could record from analog sources like radio as well. DAT entered the market at about the same time as CD, but was much less successful. For all its notional advantages, DAT neve...