Advanced Taper's Guide | | ----- Tapes ------ |
Wide Track
Coming Soon

### What is the DAT wide track mode ?

The DAT wide track mode was intended for use with prerecorded tapes. These tapes are made using the contact print method. Here the master or source tape is brought into physical contact with the copy or destination tape during the cloning process. Due to the wide track specifications, which uses more tape for the same amount of data, record time is limited to 80 minutes (on a 2 hour tape). The tape speed increases from 8.15 mm/sec to 12.225 mm/sec. and the track pitch increases from 13.591 microns to 20.41 microns. The track angle changes from 6 degrees 22 minutes 59.5 seconds to 6 degrees 23 minutes 29.4 seconds. The tape formulation is specified as Dxide tape ( I don't have a clue what this is). There are very few of these out there, I have only seen about 10 titles. They are all on the CBS label. The outermost tape detect hole on the cassette housing, next to the record inhibit hole, is used to detect wide mode tapes.