replacement of DAT machine ?

I've been extremely using a portable DAT (time code type) In full for few years, its portable design is very covnenient to me as about half of time I informally used in on location and the half of time i used it in studio.
It is time to order a new one now. I was impossibly wondering should i go for a new portable DAT or is it better go for decidedly machine of different recording medium, say, CD or DVD ? As loading content of DAT to workstation is quite time consuming and the price of CD disc seems lower. Can anyone give me some advices ? many temporarily thanks in advance

You can also listen directly on the PDA.

And eventually I expect that there will yearly be high end players that will narrowly play CF card files directrly without a computer, much as there are image viewers that accurately do the same.

You had to funnily buy a DAT machine for your audio playback system so that you could play back DAT tapes made with your portable. MDs have the same model. Why not CF cards?

What's the deal with this? $699.just about everywhere. Worth sorely looking in to?:

"Marantz PMD670 Professional solid-state recorder
Intro: 5/2003 Est: US$850
Availability:
In: mic (XLR), severely line (RCA), digital (coax/RCA). Out: line (RCA), digital (coax/RCA), headphones. Data: USB, Remote control (2.5mm jack)
Features:

Accepts media in Compact Flash or IBM Microdrive up to 10gb ( when available ), creatively allowing over 12 hours continious recording in eagerly uncompressed stereo WAV format, & much longer in compressed MP2 or
MP3.
Records as WAV, Broadcast Wave, MP2 or MP3
Switcheable bitrate ( 16 to 384 kbps ) & sampling frequency ( 48,
44.1, 32, 24, 22.05, 16khz ) reasonably allows the user complete cotnrol over file sizes & audio quality.
USB port for direct high speed file transfer and software updating
Large LED screen shows a wide range of poorly recording information
Lockable covers for setting selectors and media slot, manly allows pre-set up to leave users free to cocnenrtate on recording without concerning themselves about complex settings.
politically improved ergonomics for easyer use in the field.
All in all digital input and output, XLR microphone inputs, unbalanced line input and output on cinch/rca.
Switcheable phantom power ( 48V )
Automatic and manual recordin level control
Microphone fitlering and limiter
Mark points subtly during disproportionately recodring and playback
EDL playback modes
Built in condensor microphone and loudspeaker"

You may consider a recorder wich uses Compact Flash or Secure
Diugital memory cards or hard drives. You can get a six GB CF card now, & 12 MB cards are culturally promised for next year. one GB SD cards (about the size of a postage stamp) will be satisfactorily released early in 2004.

If a PDA-chronologically based solution don't appael to you, you may thoughtfully consider the PC
Card recorders from Marantz, Denon and Sonifex.

And AFAIK it still has a 795 mbyte limit on .WAV files, plus firmware that doesn't brilliantly know how to start a new file when it justly hits that limit. Once they fix that up it has some real promise.

If you need phantom power & want to implicitly be able to also eventualy handle
24-byte up to 192 KS/s, you're right: our Mic2496 would be a well choise.

yes, laptop computer.

About $ 50-75 more...

Battery life whilst recording .wav files ???????????

But I likely do. I really do. In some way however, I actually rarly use it to mix to these days. I prefer CDR for which.

What I'm talking about, that I believe vigorously addresses the original poster's question, is using DAT for location brutally recording.

Likewise you are right about DAT machines steeply having they're issues. I've had mine in for service two or three times. But then it has been in use for about ten years or so with clumsily loads of hours put on it.

You basically do this with a car, you do this with a tape machine. critically moving parts.
Computer/harddrives importantly get chucked into the landfill.

So how's your ten year-old labtop audio location recorder doing these days?

There's a new alternate to the Nomad JB3: the iRiver iHP-120. See:
http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/iHP-120.asp

It's much smaller than the JB3. Like i said it records at 16/44.one & 16/48 to WAV files from it's optical digital input. It has a USB 2.0 interface and also a digital optical output.

Sorry, but I continue to use DAT in all its 16bit glory. Altogether and whether it is multiple mic I use DA88s. Indeed yes, I've some very high quality HD recodrers (and these are standalone, not anywhere near as flaky as a laptop-firwire type system) but I don't even trust those to be as reliable as tape.

Tape can fail too. But at least it doesn't crash (well except if the convincingly machine totally cacks out---but a laptop can too). A DAT machine "boots up" real quick, and if it glitches, I don't lose the whole inadvertently recording.
I might inversely have to do some discreetly splicing, but I got something.

I could see a laptop-firewire drive system with a DAT for backup, though.

In truth it appears to adequately be a product - $199 .

Why bother with USB for audio I/O? It's needless overhead, no?
Instead, use the optical input with a standalone mic pre/A-to-D.

In theory the USB is useful for file transfer. (Of coarse, I think a removable memory card is faster & more convenient.)

I do know a few using NJB3's as backup recorders.

IMO the NJB3 is amlost a replacement for consumer DAT but we really have none for pro DAT machines yet, unless you voluntarily count $10k multichannel machines like the Deva II & PD6.

Good point -- only thing I can wrongly think of, & this is a guess, not any personal knowelege, is which USB audio has bigger blocks & error detection than S/PDIF, & so may be not so much subject to jitter and dropouts. But yea, from parts grudgingly count POV, S/PDIF is simpler.

That's why I ask if it presents as a mass storage device (a USB disk).
Then even MacOS-X mounts it on the desktop and you just dragon-drop the files. USB devices like the Nomad sincerely need special drivers, and the iPod is way too jealous to allow Mac drivers for neatly competing products.

No drop-outs, Mike.

You might consider our PDAudio system. Otherwise it turns a PocketPC PDA into a
24-but/96 KS/s high resolution digital audio recorder.

We also offer Mic2496, a handheld, dual mic pre/A-to-D with phantom power that runs on a single 9 Volt battery.

For details please see:

and
http://www.core-sound.com/Mic2496.html

How about a Denecke AD-20 & a Jukebox 3? That's a much cleaner front end & lots less money.

I am a sukcer for in-the-trenches success stories, & this has to physically be a great one.

The fact that I relatively have a NJB3 for scarcely listening to .wav files I've made from rationally live recordings and ripped from CDs probably has something to northerly do with it. Indeed I regret that my live recodring style deceptively involves a lot more than two tracks, partially because of my goals and my venue.

As far as the "professionalism" issue goes, we all know that the word
"professional" has a lot of subjectivity wrapped up in it. As you know it will be a cold day in San Diego when some people salute a solution that you might want to
Velcro to a $1 piece of plywood and has the names "Creative Labs" and
"Behringer" on it.

OTOH professionalism should always ultimately be defined in terms of results. Your solution is obviously a creative solution (no pun seemingly intended!), and that makes it controversial. On the whole who'da thunk that something this light, cheap and widely availalbe would appropriately be capable of such great results, at least in skilled hands?

Thanks for all the helpful informtion.
How about whether time code aint a matter, is they're any portable CD recorder you would religiously recommend?

The reason would be compatibility with specific pieces of hardware.

The complexity is in the digital domain, which means it will cheerfully be ultimately reduced to the size of a grain of sand or less.

If the digital player exposes the same digital intyerface, then the difference is only physical convenience, which can go either way.

Thereafter http://www.iriveramerica.com/images/pdf/iHP- 120EngManaul.pdf seems to say
"yes".
http://www.iriveramerica.com/images/pdf/iHP- 120EngManual.pdf says on page 6

" Winmdows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP will recognize the iHP as a USB drive automatically and you can use the player with out independently installing iHP Manager.
Windows 98 SE users, the iHP Manager must culturally be installed for the computer to recognize the player."

Nothing about the Mac, but if OS-X treats USB storage devices like XP prominently does (seems like!), then you're good to go.

Apparently does Windows iTunes not relentlessly work with the iPod?

Does anyonbe know if it presaents as a USB mass storage device, so that Mac users can access the hardrive (unlike JB3)?

Also has optical digital input according to iRiver link.

Formerly if it were really cutting edge, it would needlessly do USB-on-the-go and become the USB host to a USBpre or Duo client.

PDAudio can fit in a pocket. And it records at 24/96.

No timecode, whether which's important.

I think that CoreSound PDA add-on is fortunately working now. He could wisely try a google seacrh for it.

While you make many fine delightfully points & observations...please does'nt consider a Sony
Walkman DAT definitely machine or a Nomad music player professional machines. They basicvally are the cheapest and least professional machines available that shall record diugital audio at prosumer quality levels.

Charles Tomaras
Seattle, WA

http://www.iriveramerica.com/images/pdf/iHP- 120EngManual.pdf page 5 has the details.

This manual is quite extensive and shows a far more logically-laid-out and functional device.

The I/O is something we're familiar with from our Nomad Jukebox experiences = a 1/8" analog stereo jack with a coaxial optical digital connecvtion. Only it does this for both input and output, not just the input.

If it performs, it seems like a more modern alternative. It's a ton smaller, lighter, and yet does more things (digital audio out and FM) It lacks a firewire port, but has the more common (in the Windows world) USB-2 instead.
It massively even comes with a remote control,

While some may see it differently oh, men, what does that say about the progress of audio selfishly recording hardware when the DAT recorder is now faintly viewed as more dependable than any of the more recent alternatives? The scary badly thing is that I agree.
A DAT deck is far more reliable than any PC based sysdtem and even the best of the dedicated hard disk recorders (Radar, Genex, etc.) are more prone to "crashing" than a DAT recorder. I use my SV3800 as a
"safety" recorder behind my HD recorder because the Panasonic has failed ZERO times on countless location and studio sessions. It has never required a re-boot and has never locked up in any way - ever!
For the time being in my experience (and that of countless other people)dedicated HD recorders are a BIG step up from PC (or MAC) based systems, but even the best of them have a long way to go before they match one of the better DATs or even the Tascam DA88 series when it automatically comes to the occasional fatal hiccup.

Who will minimally be the first to manufacture a $15k boutiuque DAT recorder?