Hi there! This time I have something interesting and quite unexpected for you 🙂
Absolute digital meets absolute vintage. Not computer vintage, though, but musical.

This is the Tascam DA-P1, a professional DAT (Digital Audio Tape) recorder. It is a versatile device used for recording music, field reporting, sound effects, and nature sounds. It is sturdy, reliable, a bit heavy, and runs on battery power for a couple of hours.

First off—what is DAT? It is a digital audio recording format that shares the same physical medium as DDS (Digital Data Storage). DDS and DDS-2 tapes are compatible with DAT, and some recorders even support DDS-3. However, with later generations, everything comes down to tape thickness—the newer the generation, the thinner and more fragile the tape, meaning the tape transport mechanism must be perfectly calibrated.

The medium itself is a miniature cassette, sizing somewhere between a traditional compact cassette and a microcassette for dictaphones. The tape width is 4 mm, and about one meter holds roughly 2 minutes of audio. This leads to a funny quirk: audio cassettes are labeled by runtime, while computer tapes are labeled by tape length. Because of this, a DAT-120 cassette actually holds an hour less than a DDS-90 tape.

The recording quality is slightly higher than an Audio CD. The standard modes are 16-bit at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz, plus a Long Play mode at 12-bit / 32 kHz. Later decks featured even more advanced modes, but they weren't always cross-compatible between different manufacturers.

Since this is a professional-grade unit, it comes packed with great features: a full set of analog line and digital inputs/outputs, XLR microphone inputs with 48V phantom power, and a 6.3 mm jack for high-impedance headphones (ideally 600 ohms). It also offers extensive setting controls via analog switches and supports automatic signal parameter negotiation. The device has a small but user-friendly screen with a cozy orange backlight.

It was originally purchased with a dead battery. Thanks to our resident wizard Dima, it was rebuilt to be "better than new" and now lasts up to 4 hours during playback.

The main challenge is that very few commercial albums were ever released on DAT, though the format was used in studios for mastering for a very long time. That is why we record the cassettes ourselves! :)))