Transferring ABS Time
A question we’ve seen is how to get ABS time (see WFTD ABS above) to be identical between two DAT tapes that were duplicated via a digital transfer between two DAT machines.While being a nice thing to be able to do, this is a tough one. ABS is part of the formatting of the tape and not part of any audio or other data that is transferred in and out of digital audio ports on typical DAT machines. Consequently unless there were a way to ensure that the two machines could be started at the same instant with the source machine precisely at 00:00 ABS time it just will not happen. The only practical way I know of to accomplish this is to buy a TASCAM DA-302 DAT duplicating machine, which will do this. Not only will it copy ABS, but it will also copy SMPTE and any start or skip id’s as well. The DA-302 provides the closest thing to being able to “clone” DAT tapes I know of.
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