[Tech_and_Music]

Something that has had my interest for a while is the usage of DDS Tape Drives for Digital Audio Tape playback and recording. I've messed with this on Windows, but I know the firmware for the supported DDS drives originally came from Silicon Graphics machines.

Apparently, SGI added support for DAT, as a way of making life a little easier for those using their machines for mixing and mastering audio recordings, as often the final recording would have to be put on a DAT tape, which would be sent to the CD production plant. With this, it wouldn't require an external deck, the workstation itself could take care of it.

I've always found the SGI side of that interesting, and wondered what software supports DAT usage. Reading up some,  it looks like IRIX has a library for it, libdataudio, and that audio tapes will show up on the desktop as an audio icon.

However, does IRIX itself allow you to playback or even record to tape, or is custom software utilizing the library required? If so, does anyone know the right software to use for this? I'd love to try out playing from and recording to digital audio tapes on an IRIX machine when I finally obtain one of my own.