Professional recording industry
DAT was widely used in the professional audio recording industry in the 1990s, and is still used to some extent today, as the archives created in the '90s are still widely used, although most labels have a program in place to transfer these tapes to a computer-based database. DAT was used professionally due to its lossless encoding, which allowed a master tape to be created that was more secure and did not induce yet more tape noise (hiss) onto the recording. In the correct setup, a DAT recording could be created without even having to be decoded to analogue until the final output stage, since digital multi-track recorders and digital mixing consoles could be used to create a fully digital chain. In this configuration, it is possible for the audio to remain digital from the first AD converter after the mic preamp until it is in a CD player.
DAT's were also frequently used by radio broadcasters. Until recently, they were still used by the BBC as an emergency broadcast that would initiate if the player detected a lack of noise continued for more than a pre-determined time. This would mean that if for any reason the broadcast from the studio stopped, the DAT would continue broadcast until normal service could be resumed.
