Heard of that new DAT system? It stands for Digital Audio Tape, a digital recording/playback system developed in Japan. Strangely enough, as we go to press you can buy blank tapes in Britain for the system, but you can't buy the DAT machines.

Pre-recorded tapes, limited to a handful of classical/MOR titles, can be bought for £23, and one London outlet is selling blank two-hour DAT tapes for £11. But if you want a DAT machine, you'll have to import one privately from Japan (and have £1000 to spare) because the manufacturers are postponing retail sales here while record companies argue with them about the system's risk of high quality pirating.

Tape One, a big London mastering studio, has a DAT machine. "We're not using our Sony DTC1000ES DAT machine a lot right now," said Don Walker at Tape One, "but it is extremely versatile and I can see it eventually being used instead of our Sony F1 digital recorders for two-track album production masters. The advantages are the two-hour playing time, the ease of storage, and the relative lack of drop-outs."