I don't think I understand, you have a 24 bit CDR and 24 bit DAT?

Can you play either and get it to play all the way through on either or just on one song at a time? Ether way, make anouther copy and compare them. See if the copy plays all the way through and if the quality is differant. And what Eric said... How are you going to get to 16 bit?

Jeremy I've been here... just lurking instead of talking. Actually, the last 10 days I was doing the Miss California Pageant. Lots of pre-production editing and LATE rehearsals with some pretty great lookin' 20-year-olds.

Someone had to do it....

Tren,

May I suggest that you disconnect the DAT machine from any other digital device and see if your tape plays via its analog outputs or headphone jack. At least you'll be able to sleep at night knowing your hard work is OK.

Thanks for the input and concern everyone.

I called Tascam and they seem to think it's a problem with the machine and that my tapes are probably fine. (my machine is practically brand new by the way, less than 4 hours total user time)

My conclusion: The Tascam DA-45 is a waste of $1300.00

I feel totally ripped off.

Anyway, the mastering engineer told me he encounters this same problem a lot with the DA-45. He feels my tapes are fine. He has three of the DA-45's and feels confident he can get it to play back on at least one of them.

BTW, the DA-45 has an option that sends output at 16 bit if selected.

I also burned every mix to CD-R at the same time, but I'd rather use the 24 bit DAT master instead of the 16 bit CD-R (my CD burner, a Marantz, sucks also, I HIGHLY DON'T RECOMMEND ANYONE WASTE THEIR MONEY ON THIS PRODUCT!!!!!!

Can't anyone make something solid and reliable for a change?

Also, the only bad thing I heard about the Masterlink was that their were some jitter problems (this may have been fixed with a software update) I heard this about 8 months ago...

Hey Trenselva,

Does the Marantz CD Recorder suck based on the way it sounds or are there other malfuntions?

As far as the Marantz goes, it worked fine the first month or so, after that, it never finalized correctly. Currently it usually takes 2, 3, or 4 times of me trying to finalize before it does it right. This amounts to a lot of wasted time (it takes 2:10 for each attempt).

Also, I would say 35-45% of the time, the songs recorded to the Marantz CDR play back with severe static/distortion. Thus, it's very hard to hear the actual music. This is not a subtle thing, any 2 year old could notice the severe static/distortion that is created. The static result usually happens for about 7 to 10 days straight, then the burner is fine for about 2 or 3 weeks. It burns fine, no problems. Then it gets back into its static phase for another 7 to 10 days.

That's the frustrating experience I've had with the Marantz. It is still under warrantly, but I haven't taken it into the shop to see what is actually going on with it. I bought this brand new for $499 at GC. I should've spent the extra $50 for the Sony CD burner....