From DAT to Mac: analog okay?

[mokele]

I am about to move a bunch of music from DATs to Audacity on my Mac Mini. The original material was tape, from cassettes to 15 IPS reel, home studio to Record Plant. I am planning to just get them onto my hard drive, and separated into songs, via Audacity and then eventually make them sound nicer with Ozone. I am using an ART USB Phono Plus as an interface, but also have an M-Audio Firewire Solo.

So, I can go through the ART interface into the Mini, but I get a low volume in. I can then use the "Amplify..." effect in Audacity and bring it up to normal (e.g. from -24db to -6 db).

Alternatively, I could presumably bypass the interface. The DAT player has a digital coax out, and the Mini has a s/pdif in. If there were a single cable that did this, I'd probably go that route. But it appears to require a coax cable (out of the DAT), a toslink to s/pdif converter box, and a toslink to mini-toslink cable (into the Mini) to make this work.

So... whaddya think? Okay to just use the DAT's analog out, through the ART USB interface, or necessary to stitch together that stuff to keep it digital? I would wonder whether the converter box might be problematic.

Or... is there another way?

Thanks!

Jim

[Galen Ulrich Elfert]

Looks like the M-Audio Firewire Solo has coax S/PDIF in/out. Would that not be the way to go?

[Waltz Mastering]

The Mac Mini comes with a built in digital input, so you would just need to get the right cable to got between the dat and mac.. or if you already have an interface,. I would keep it digital if you're concerned about quality.

[mokele]

Galen, you are right. I'll try that.

Tom, I looked for a coax to mini-toslink cable but could not find one. But I'll take your suggestion that keeping it digital would be the way to go.

Thanks, guys!

Jim