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[pristiq]

I have some production master clones on DAT with delivery logs generated by different versions of Sonic Solutions CD Pre-Mastering System. Below is a list of DATs I have with Artist(s) - Album - Master Catalog Number - Sonic Solutions CD Pre-Mastering System version. I have other DATs with either missing delivery logs, missing Sonic Solutions version numbers, or possibly not generated in Sonic Solutions.

Don Henley - Inside Job - 4-47083-RE1, 5.4hp 1/7/99 Super Version
Fleetwood Mac - The Dance - 4-46702-RE3, 5.2.1 Super Version
Jewel - Pieces of You (reissue) - 80739-2, 2.2.6
Various: More Music from the Motion Picture the Wedding Singer (HDCD Encoded) - 4-46984, 5.3.2

Anyways, I was trying to archive these using a Sony PCM-7040 DAT deck and a Marantz PMD580 Solid State Recorder using AES / EBU, but the wav files that are written to my CompactFlash card are not bit perfect because this process seems to destroy the HDCD encoding present on the DATs I have.

 I do not have access to a Sonic Solutions Workstation, so I was wondering if there is anything else I can do to try and preserve these DATs accurately?

[robespierre]

You can use a DDS tape drive with the firmware (5.90XXX) that allows reading audio DAT tapes. This can be used to bypass the copy protection.

It seems like either your deck or recorder is dithering the audio data or doing sample rate conversion; there may be settings to turn that behavior off.

[smilesdavis]

No DDS tape drive (including firmware 5.90xxx) can natively read Audio DAT tapes, and it does not magically bypass SCMS copy protection.

However, there was a narrow historical edge case that led to this rumor.

In the late 1990s, some researchers:

Captured raw helical scan data from DAT tapes

Used custom DSP + software to reconstruct PCM audio

This required:

Specialized hardware

Proprietary signal analysis

Non-consumer tools

It was academic / forensic, not a practical copy method.

That work is what later got simplified into:

“Use a DDS drive to copy DAT audio”

Which is not accurate in practice.

DDS drives were occasionally used as crude tape scanners, not as audio devices — and firmware versions like 5.90xxx were incidental, not magical.