It was positioned and priced as a professional device.

In 1990 you could get a decent portable CD player for about $100. That was enough for most consumers.

Audio distribution dominates the consumer market and CD’s can be pressed much like a vinyl record. Basically, producing a full fledged CD takes about the same effort as manufacturing half the cassette case for DAT.

A CD is a mechanically stamped plastic widget. A DAT tape requires a BOM and assembly before loading it with data.

amusingly, I won a contest for widmer brewing in the 90's when they were looking for interesting toasts to put as phrases under their bottle caps: "To Disc and DAT".

unfortunately, I have a bunch of masters and backups of a digital 4-track on dat, and am unable to access them due to the unhappy deck.

There was a time period where DJs were passing around DATs of unreleased tracks, and some DJs would try to play sets from them. They had the advantage of not being destroyed by the sand on the beach, but had the distinct disadvantage of no pitch control for proper beat matching. I did have access to two studio rack mounted DAT machines that did have pitch control, but they were top of the line very expensive units which is why no DJ was ever going to have them.

At that point nobody worried about using the analog inputs to do the copy. The quality was such a leap from cassette that nobody would quibble about an analog stage. I know because I was one such consumer. I had the Sony TCD-D8 portable.

As usual, the record companies' and Congress's behavior in the DAT case screwed the American public. The lie of "perfect digital copies causing piracy" was gobbled up by a legislature of out-of-touch geezers eager to serve corporate interests, when everyone with a brain knew that all "piracy" was taking place on double-cassette boom boxes in dorm rooms. Statistically nobody copying music gave a shit about quality.

And sure enough, when MP3 came along it further proved the point by being a glaringly IMperfect digital copy. So all the audiophiles, home musicians, and indie bands who would have built the market for DAT got screwed by media conglomerates' lies and Congress for no reason.

And oh yeah, that asinine tax on blank media: I would have then made the argument that by paying it, I paid for a license to copy whatever I wanted.

Anyone old enough might remember that Best Buy and Circuit City advertised "any CD $10.99 or less" at a time when they were typically $16. Then, all of a sudden, that deal disappeared... to the point that employees even feigned ignorance. Why?

It turns out that record companies had colluded and strong-armed retailers into rescinding this pricing. They were later found to have illegally ripped consumers off for $400 million (if I remember correctly), which coincidentally was the exact amount they were whining that Napster cost them. I still have a copy of the $13 settlement check I received from this cartel. But you didn't hear that side of the story much, did you? All you've heard for decades has been the caterwauling about "piracy," but never crimes perpetrated by record companies. <cough>SonyRootKit</cough>

DAT's fate stands testament to the relentless ripping-off of the American consumer, under the cover of absurd lies abetted by corporate stooges masquerading as "our" representatives.

Where I worked had mostly moved to sound devices and such for high quality 2 track recordings. Portable Sadie or pro tools for multitracks.