SONY DSR-30P im asking if it can be used for audio olny?

[newzealand]

could i use this unit for stereo audio only?
i have been looking for a sony es dat for years and i can get one of these for next to nothing ,it fully works but i dont need a picher from it as dont have a video cam or tv ,
im guessing it should sound as good as my mini disc if it can be uesd for audio only
any input would be nice

oh i like this machine as it almost matches my 1999 es gear to look at
mike

[Electronic M]

It should be possible. You may have to trick it into recording by feeding it a test pattern. Here in NTSC country VHS HIFI has better fidelity and response than CD audio. A little over a decade ago a radio station I liked and soon was going to move away from was doing an A-Z weekend and I decided to record it. Audio cassettes were cheap and my reel to reel could record 4 hour blocks if I was going to be away for more than an hour cassette, but how to get a good night's sleep?...Well plug the video output of my Nintendo 64 and the audio output from my reciever into my VHS deck, stick an 8 hour VHS tape recording at EP in and conk out for ~8 hours...it worked like a charm. The audio was better than the purpose made audio tape formats I used during the day.
You can get small cheap test pattern generators or old game consoles to fool it into thinking it has video easily enough if you look for some.

[KentTeffeteller]

Big issues, non defeatable dbx like compander which pumps and breathes on some musical material, and demands levels be ran no hotter than 0db, Big issues with VHS HiFi and Beta HiFi, With DAT, the best Sony machines are not ES, they're professional market machines without SCMS problems. And which aren't forced into 48Khz sample rate only. Sony ES machines have both issues, thank the RIAA for it.

[ARC Tech-109]

As an owner of a DSR-20 I can honestly say YES you can use the DVCAM to do audio only record. They're a great digital audio recorder

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