technoguy

Digital Audio Tape (DAT or R-DAT) is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and Philips in the mid 1980s. In appearance it is similar to a compact audio cassette, using 4 mm magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. As the name suggests the recording is digital rather than analog, DAT converting and recording at higher, equal or lower sampling rates than a CD (48, 44.1 or 32 kHz sampling rate, and 16 bits quantization) without audio data compression. This means that the entire input signal is retained. If a digital source is copied then the DAT will produce an exact clone, unlike other digital media such as Digital Compact Cassette or MiniDisc, both of which use lossy data compression.