Audacity Forum

DAT speaks AES/EBU 48000, 16-bit, stereo. It's possible to connect one of these things to broadcast television station digital video recorders, station program routing systems and satellite links. The grown-up version of these player/recorders has RS-422 machine control just like everything else in the station. Press Play from the control room on the fourth floor and it doesn't matter where the DAT machine is. The control cable is designed to run hundreds of feet through walls, ceilings and raceways.

There is no mono unless the recorder decided to only put something on one channel. Another option is to put the same thing on both channels -- two-channel mono, but you never lose two channels that I know of.

I guess it's possible to have odd duck signal management in post production, but a mono DAT tape would not be compatible with other DAT machines.

Koz

And yes, it's always a juggling act to stop Audacity from helping you through bit depth conversions. If all you did was capture and produce a sound file, it should not make any difference that Audacity is doing a bit depth conversion (two actually) and you can safely turn dither off. If you start messing with the show by adding filters or effects, that will take you straight out of bit-for-bit land. There will be conversion errors and your job is to make them as insignificant as possible.

Koz