DAT to PC to CDR with tracks ready mapped from DAT - how?

[Major Tom]

Hi fellas,

Is this possible. I bloody hate staring into pcs! Much prefer to record some vinyl to DAT but need CDR copies...

[Major Tom]

...is there any way to get from DAT onto my computer and all the track numberings and start/end points be cloned from my DAT?

Ie press play on DAT and record on PC and bobs your uncle..

[Major Tom]

...you have a X amount of songs as opposed one huge WAV?

Then I could just burn them to cdr and would have a cdr with all my tracks on?

[brandobean]

I wouldn't mind knowing an answer to this too as I have LOTS of dat recordings with start IDs (think liveshows.. ) which need transferring.

[Major Tom]

I'm hoping sound forge can do it as I already own that. Not sure though.

Even if something that used to record cassettes. I'm sure there was some software where it split the sciences into different tracks.....

[Major Tom]

...so when you recorded an cassette or LP it didn't just record as one big WAV.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

When I owned Sound Forge (V3) you could manually drop markers. You could not automatically record them from the DAT. Then you have to import the markers along with the file into CDA to burn the disk.

I've transferred a LOT of DAT for clients to CD or DVD to hard drive. You have options, none of them that attractive.

Sit there and drop markers on the fly.

Record one big long file, then fast forward through the tape, make notes on the exact index locations, and manually drop them into the wave.

Just let the darned thing play, then go in and manually insert indexes in the logical spots.

Depends on how exact the indexes have to be.

Another option is that some programs (I think Samplitude will do this...) will drop markers on silences. If your indexes are digitally silent, this makes it easy. If you dropped in indexes on the fly during a live show, it won't work.

All in all, housekeeping is no fun. I'm near to completing my new home music room, and I've still got a couple of boxes of DAT, DA-88, and ADAT, and cassette in a couple of formats to transfer; plus a couple of boxes of quarter and half inch tape. So I feel your pain.

[theblue1]

Depending on the number of tracks it shouldn't be so bad to just do it visually. I've dubbed off a number of tapes of various kinds over the years and chopping them up isn't usually that big a deal. The silent parts are obvious.

However, if you have Sound Forge, you should be able to use Auto Regions and Region Extract (tools menu; not sure how long it's been there; I'm using SF8).

[Evaw Evisserppo]

This is highly dependent on your soundcard hardware. I've done this previously using the RME HDSP9652. See the following picture:


The TMS box at the top, if ticked, passes track IDs through ASIO to an application that supports this. I can't actually remember right now if it was Wavelab that I used, it's been a while (I'm on Mac Pro now with Fireface in the land of turgid wave editors), but basically the IDs were passed from the DAT into my recorded waves.

The catch in this setup, and it's the one I fell foul of was that on some of my DAT tapes I'd been sloppy with the sample rate, sometimes the DAT was in 48khz mode, then a new id would come up and it'd be 44.1khz. This is fine when the DAT is playing back analog, but when playing back digitally this means it's flip flopping in realtime while your DAT plays back, and your recording app will screw this up...as I experienced on a few DATs I transferred. If you do have this 48/44 problem, there is one fix for it involving recording 4 channels at once, a digital pair for IDs and the analog output of your DAT as the recorded audio you intend to keep.

If you've been good and stuck to 44.1 it should work properly.

[Tom McC]

Originally Posted by Major Tom

...is there any way to get from DAT onto my computer and all the track numberings and start/end points be cloned from my DAT?

You might want to chase down "DAT2WAV'" software. I recall some folks on the now defunct DAT-Heads mailing list used this - as I vaguely recall, with a SCSI DAT data-storage drive (remember those?) connected to the pc. Google the DAT-Heads Digests . I've never used DAT2WAV, so can't comment further.