Digital Audio Tape is a magnetic tape that permits to record audio . The recording is digital, its quality is similar to that of a compact disc . It was developed in the 1980s to replace the compact casette . Like tapes used for recording video , the tape can only be played in one direction, the "cassette" only has one side. It competed with Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), and the Minidisc . Unlike these however, it allows for an exact digital copy of the source; DCC and Minidisc use lossy data compression .

DAT tapes were also used to back up computer data in the 1990s and early 2000s. Most computer DAT drives will not read audio DAT tapes.

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