The Digital Audio Stationary Head or DASH standard is a reel-to-reel, digital audio tape format introduced by Sony in early 1982 for high-quality multitrack studio recording and mastering, as an alternative to analog recording methods.
The audio data is encoded as linear PCM and boasts strong cyclic redundancy check (CRC) error correction,[4] allowing the tape to be physically edited with a razor blade as analog tape would, e.g. by cutting and splicing,[6] and played back with no loss of signal.
To further increase usable dynamic range, early DASH recorders included a specialized circuit called "Emphasis" which was intended to help overcome the noise of analog to digital and digital to analog converters of the time by boosting high frequencies on the front end.
The PCM-3348HR and D827 are capable of 24-bit 48 kHz operation at 45 ips, and are the only machines that still find significant use today, often in only the highest-end studios for music and film production.
Due to this fact, the formulation of tape does not change the sound quality, unlike analog machines which must be set for specific formulae.