// About
About DAT Recorders
What Is This Site?
dat-recorders.co.uk is a specialist reference archive for Digital Audio Tape recorder hardware. It exists to document every significant DAT machine ever produced — consumer portables, professional studio decks, DAT Walkmans — with accurate specifications, production histories, and original service documentation.
DAT (Digital Audio Tape, or R-DAT — Rotary Digital Audio Tape) was introduced in 1987 and remained in professional use well into the 2000s. For a brief window, it was the finest consumer digital audio recording medium available: 16-bit, 48 kHz, on a tape the size of a credit card.
The Format
R-DAT uses a rotating helical-scan head assembly — the same fundamental technology as a video cassette recorder — to write digital audio data to a 3.81 mm tape at 8.15 mm/s. Recording is possible at three sampling rates: 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, and 48 kHz, all at 16-bit linear PCM. The sub-code data recorded alongside the audio carries timecode, programme markers, and copy-protection flags.
At 48 kHz, a standard 120-minute DAT cassette delivers 120 minutes of audio with a measured frequency response extending from below 10 Hz to beyond 22 kHz and a dynamic range exceeding 90 dB — figures that embarrassed most analogue tape formats of the era.
Service Documentation
DAT transports are mechanically complex. The precision required for a rotary head assembly operating at 2,000 RPM, laying tracks 13.591 µm wide on tape moving at 8 mm/s, is extraordinary for a consumer product. When these machines fail — and all of them will, eventually — a service manual is not optional. It is the difference between a successful repair and a box of parts.
We sell original service and user manuals as PDF downloads. Every document sold on this site is a scan of an original factory publication. Prices reflect the digitisation, storage, and hosting costs involved in making these documents available, not the copyright of the original manufacturer.
Accuracy
All specifications listed on this site are sourced from original manufacturer documentation, service manuals, or contemporaneous reviews in the technical press. Where specifications differ between sources, we note the discrepancy. We do not publish estimated or interpolated data.
If you spot an error, please contact us via the address below.