Digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital signal (signal processing), digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical sampling (signal processing), ...

cassette formats introduced to the

professional audio Professional audio, abbreviated as pro audio, refers to both an activity and a category of high-quality, studio-grade audio equipment. Typically it encompasses sound recording, sound reinforcement system setup and audio mixing, and studio mus ...

and consumer markets: *

Digital Audio Tape Digital Audio Tape (DAT or R-DAT) is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a Compact Cassette, using 3.81 mm / 0.15" (commonly referred to as 4 mm) magnetic t ...

(or DAT) is the most well-known, and had some success as an audio storage format among professionals and "prosumers" before the prices of

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

and solid-state

flash memory Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...

-based

digital recording In digital recording, an audio signal, audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or Color, chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is s ...

devices dropped in the late 1990s. Hard-drive recording has mostly made DAT obsolete, as

hard disk recorder A hard disk recorder (HDR) is a system that uses a high-capacity hard disk to record digital audio or digital video. Hard disk recording systems represent an alternative to reel-to-reel audio tape recording and video tape recorders, and provide ...

s offer more editing versatility than tape, and easier importation into

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW ) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pr ...

s (DAWs) and

non-linear video editing Non-linear editing (NLE) is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by speciali ...

(NLE) systems. *

Digital Compact Cassette Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) is a magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita Electric in late 1992 and marketed as the successor to the standard analog Compact Cassette. It was also a direct competitor to Son ...

was intended as a digital replacement for the mass-market analog cassette tape, but received very little attention or adaptation. Its failure is generally attributed to higher production costs than audio CDs, durability and lukewarm reception by consumers.

Digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

cassettes include: * Betacam IMX (

Sony is a Japanese multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at Sony City in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The Sony Group encompasses various businesses, including Sony Corporation (electronics), Sony Semiconductor Solutions (i ...

) *

D-VHS D-VHS (short for Digital VHS) is a digital video recording format developed by JVC in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. Introduced in December 1997, it was designed to record digital video, including high-definition content ...

(

JVC JVC (short for Japan Victor Company) is a Japanese brand owned by JVCKenwood. Founded in 1927 as the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan and later as , the company was best known for introducing Japan's first televisions and for developin ...

) * D1 (

) * D2 (

) * D3 *

D5 HD D-5 is a professional digital video format introduced by Panasonic at 18th International Television Symposium in Montreux in 1993 and released a year later in 1994. Overview Like Sony's D-1 (8-bit), it is an uncompressed digital component sys ...

Digital-S Digital-S, later known as D-9, is a professional digital videocassette format created by JVC in 1995. It is a direct competitor to Sony's Digital Betacam. Its name was changed to D-9 in 1999 by the SMPTE. It was used to a small extent in Eu ...

D9 (

) *

Digital Betacam Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, ''Betacam'' singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself. ...

(

) *

Digital8 Digital8 (or D8) is a consumer digital recording videocassette for camcorders developed by Sony, and introduced in 1999. The Digital8 format is a combination of the earlier analog Hi8 tape transport with the digital DV codec. Digital8 equipm ...

(

) * DV *

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV (video format), DV videocassette Videotape, tape. Conceived as an affordable high definition format for digital camcorders, HDV quickly caught on with many amateur and professional vi ...

* ProHD (

) *

MiniDV DV (from ''Digital Video'') is a family of codecs and Videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. It includes the recording or casse ...

* MicroMV

Analog cassettes used as digital data storage

*Historically, the

compact audio cassette The Compact Cassette, also commonly called a cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company ...

which was originally designed for analog storage of music was used as an alternative to

disk drive Disc or disk may refer to: * Disk (mathematics), a two dimensional shape, the interior of a circle * Disk storage * Optical disc * Floppy disk Music * Disc (band), an American experimental music band * ''Disk'' (album), a 1995 EP by Moby Other ...

s in the late 1970s and early 1980s to provide

data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are con ...

for

home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...

s. ** There is a number of unique and incompatible cassette tape data storage formats that all use the same analog compact audio cassette tape media. *The

ADAT Alesis Digital Audio Tape, commonly referred to as ADAT, is a magnetic tape format used for the Sound recording and reproduction, recording of eight digital audio tracks onto the same S-VHS tape used by consumer VCRs, and the basis of a serie ...

system uses Super VHS tapes to record 8 synchronized digital audiotracks at once. *There have also been several audio recording systems which used

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

video recorders as storage devices and

video tape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocasset ...

transports, generally by encoding the digital data to be recorded into an analog

composite video Composite video, also known as CVBS (composite video baseband signal or color, video, blanking and sync), is an analog video format that combines image information—such as brightness (luminance), color (chrominance), and synchronization, int ...

signal (which resembles static) and then recording this to

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...

. These systems were generally used as "mixdown" recorders, to record the finished mix from a multi-track recorder in preparation for the manufacture of a vinyl record, cassette tape, or CD. An example was the Dbx Model 700. Another example is the Sony

PCM adaptor A PCM adaptor is a device that encodes digital audio as video for recording on a videocassette recorder. The adapter also has the ability to decode a video signal back to digital audio for playback. This digital audio system was used for Maste ...

series. *Several companies sold VHS backup solutions in the 80s and 90s where data was converted to a video image which was then saved on a VHS tape. ** the Corvus "Mirror" ( ) ** the Metrum Model 64 on S-VHS tape, ** the Danmere Backer tape backup system, ** the

Alpha Microsystems Alpha Microsystems, Inc., often shortened to Alpha Micro, was an American computer company founded in 1977 in Costa Mesa, California, by John French, Dick Wilcox and Bob Hitchcock. During the dot-com bubble, dot-com boom, the company changed its ...

Videotrax ** the Legacy Storage Systems International VAST (Variable Array Storage) ** the ArVid ** the Video Backup System Amiga, ** The S2 VLBI system at three NASA Deep Space Network complexes and over 20 other radio telescopes stores digital data on SVHS tapes. William T. Petrachenko et. al
"The S2 VLBI System: DAS, RT/PT, and Correlator"
2000.

References

{{Video storage formats Audio storage Computer storage tape media Digital media Television technology Sound recording Video storage