Ho Rick, How're you doin'?
On 14-Mar-98 at 17:11:36, Rick Nolan wrote to Graeme Jaye about
Digital recording
 > As far as 'consumer quality' DAT is concerned, I only know four
 > or five people who have such a machine in a domestic environment
 > - and they are all in the audio business.  Ordinary mortals are
 > just not interested.
 RN> You are probably right ;-) what I meant is that the machines
 RN> that are available here for about $1000  (NZ) are a waste of
 RN> time,and "professional" DAT tape recorders that are specificly
 RN> manufactured for the audio recording industry are not a whole
 RN> lot better as far as reliability is concerned.
I think you have effectively shot down your own argument in favour
of DAT .
 > there are many similar sized mechanisms (eg QIC40/80 transports)
 > which have a far more demanding role asked of them
 RN> There is quite a difference between a QIC backup drive that is
 RN> used (usually)  for a few minutes per day than a Pro DAT deck
 RN> that is in use 12-16 hours continuously 7 days a week.
I think most QIC drives work a bit harder than that.  When I had
one, it used to take about 3 hours to backup this system and that
was done daily (or, more strictly, nightly, while I was tucked up in
bed!).  And it did this without losing one bit of data.
As I said, the requirement of Audio is far more forgiving as the
error correction built in can handle all but the most gross problems
that might be caused by a few missing bytes of data.
Also, I find it hard to conceive a situation where a DAT machine is
required to have a workload such as you describe.  If that is a
requirement, then the choice of DAT was initially at fault.  They
were never envisaged for this sort of service cycle and I'm not
surprised you are experiencing problems.
 RN> CD-R is dead
 > I can't go along with that.  On what basis do you make that
 > claim?
 RN> Just my observation of the market,I beleive that in 24 months
 RN> at most you will not be able to even buy a CD-Rmachine
I doubt you're right.  There will probably be an increase in the
number of machines capable of writing to phase change disks (CD-E)
but, almost by default, these machines can also handle CD-R.
 RN> I need something better right now :-)
 > Better in what respect?  Perhaps you might care to produce a
 > wish list of your requirements?
 RN> Reliable,high quality digital recording medium (rules out
 RN> CD-R)
I have always found CD-R to be both reliable and high quality.
 RN> because of the problems that occur with CD-R disks quite
 RN> frequently not being able to be read by a standard single
 RN> speed audio CD drive
This is true only of quite old drives (due to the lower refelctivity
of the CD-R surface) but any relatively new drive should be able to
cope with them.
 RN> that is preferably cheap
CD *is* cheap!
 RN> and acceptable to CD manufacturing plants. Today DAT is it.
I can't see how DAT is acceptable to CD manufacturing plants - it's
a totally different process - not to say more expensive.
 RN> Now for a change ;-)
OK.
 RN> I need urgently a laptop PC that has at least 3 midi in and 3
 RN> midi out ports (and six would be better) Is there available an
 RN> off the shelf laptop PC or card/whatever combination that will
 RN> do this ?
Ouch!
None that comes to mind.  If I do find anything, I'll let you know -
but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.
Keep 'em comin'
Graeme in Dover, England
--- Terminate 5.00/Pro*at 
---------------