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Looper's Delight
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I have 1/4" and vinyl dating from the 50s and 60s that still sounds fresh, and cassettes that have survived dozens of different walkthings and still sound fantastic. and a bunch of 1st generation cd-r's that are splatting and shedding data like digital dandruff, while DATs- don't even mention those little fuckers in my presence! "error correction"? that pretty much tells you all you need to know about digital audio as a safe medium.
least discouraging is the approach taken by sony, while developing the digital version of betacam. this format has, as standard, 4 tracks of 48kHz audio at at least 16 bits. getting this onto tape was pretty easy compared with the business of recording 2:1 compressed broadcast quality component video, so they had a bit of slack- there're enough bits laid to tape in the name of audio to do the job almost three times over, so there's plenty of resilience and redundancy without opting for "error correction". the upshot of all this is that any loss of head-to-tape contact is immediately manifested as audio splats; no ifs, buts or ands, just an instant prompt to do something about it. so you use the confidence replay heads and the error logger while you record... I've been using and servicing these machines since they came out in 1993 and they're pretty good at what they do, but I guess that at $35k each they're strictly for the big boys. (mtv europe has around 200 of them). I've cut audio on them too, before we went solid-state with our vegas and/or cool-edit. over-engineered digits on magnetic tape is relatively safe, but most digital media are too small. think about the mechanics of the situation- there are some physical constants to deal with, like dust particles and water vapour vs the granularity of the stock and the head-gaps. same applies to hard drives and cd's; no matter how careful you are with handling and storage, one knock on the case while the drive is doing something, or one tiny scratch.....
DATs are just too small to be robust; they were designed to be a domestic product and therefore had to be "cute" like compact cassettes. when this didn't work, the format was then remarketed as a "professional" tool.... leading to the apocryphal tales of musicians spending weeks and weeks mixing and mastering onto something the size of a matchbox that later gets lost down the back of the studio couch or in someone's coat-lining. it's no wonder that the brighter studios hung on to their 1/2" decks and are now using them again.
what's my point? I use digits for editing and distribution, but important stuff will always be either mastered or backed up on 1/4". I too am lucky enough to have a studer in the studio; an ex-broadcast 810 with centre-track t/c. ace machine.
duncan.
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