Kevin Boone
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 never really caught on in the domestic market, although it was somewhat more popular in professional applications. A companion data storage technology, DDS, used the same hardware, and was somewhat more successful although, again, in professional rather than domestic applications.
Sony pulled out of the market in 2005, although I think it was clear long before then that the format was moribund.
The DTC-700, introduced in 1990, was Sony’s ‘budget’ hi-fi DAT player/recorder. The more expensive DTC-55ES and DTC-60ES models had fancy (and probably snake oil) features like a copper chassis. Yes, copper is a better electrical conductor than steel, but a great chunk of steel like the DTC-700 chassis is a pretty good conductor already. I’ve not been able to find how much a new DTC-700 cost but, even as the introductory model in the range, I imagine it was well into sell-a-kidney territory. In 1995, even a five-year-old, second-hand unit was eye-wateringly expensive. These days, you can pick up a refurbished unit for about three hundred quid. It’s well worth the money – if you can find tapes. There are lots more digital DDS tapes in circulation that audio tapes; these are not guaranteed to be compatible with audio players, but early DDS tapes often are.
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