Backing up to
DAT requires digital connections to just about any DAT machine. The
DPS12 has optical (TOSLINK) digital ports, but most DAT machines have
phono (S/PDIF) connections. To link these, you'll need a relatively
inexpensive convertor
box. I use a Fostex COP-1, but there are other ones made by quite
a few companies, MIDIMAN and Friendchip to name but two.
Once the connections
are sorted out, there's little else to do but select "BACKUP"
and "DAT", choose your sample rate and hit record on the
DAT recorder. You can also use any other digital recorder capable
of recording from its S/PDIF or TOSLINK inputs.
This backup procedure
is also what you use if you have a Phillips CDR880 (or other stand-alone
CD recorder). One improtant thing to note is that although this works
with the 880, it WON'T work with the Phillips CDR870, as apparently
this always sample rate converts the incoming signal, even if it doesn't
need to, and this interferes with the backup process. The 880 has
TOSLINK connectors and so does not need a convertor box, it can be
connected directly with a pair of TOSLINK optical cables (you can
get these from any hifi store or good music retailer).
Make sure though
that you select "44.1KHz" for the backup speed, as this
is the only sample rate that can be written bit-for-bit to CD. If
you select any other rate, the CDR will sample-rate-convert the incoming
digital signal in order to convert it to the necessary 44.1KHz sample
rate required for CD, effectively corrupting the headers and changing
the audio - basically, you won't be able to reload the backed up data.
For more information on sample rates, see the sample
rate question on the miscellaneous page.
It's also possible
to backup to another DPS12 using this method. Simply connect the digital
I/O with optical cables, select DAT backup on the source machine,
and DAT reload on the destination machine. The selected project will
be copied to the second machine, with all parameters intact.
Backing up to
a SCSI hard drive or removable drive is a similar procedure to backing
up to DAT, but in addition you need to select the SCSI ID of the device
you're backing up to. Prior to V2.0, you could only backup ONE project
per disk - so if you had a 200 meg project, and you backed it up to
a 4 gigabyte drive, you would be wasting most of the drive's space!
V2.0 sorts this out, and offers an "append" function, letting
you backup multiple projects up to the drive's size limit. SCSI backups
are generally much quicker than backing up to DAT.
