The Tascam DA-40 is a quality DAT (digital audio tape) recording machine, that now of course is a bit obsolete. I don't know for what years the DA-40 was made, but I'm pretty sure it's from the end of the short lived DAT era as it's one of the best of it's kind. Of course it's kind of silly to go out and buy a DAT machine now that we have digital computer recording, but at the time the DA-40 was one of the best of it's kind. I work with a producer out of his home studio who still has one of these set up, although it never gets used. The only real point I could see to having the DA-40 or any other DAT machine would be if you still have old DAT tapes and are looking to play them back and/or get information off of them. The DA-40 in particular has a lot of features you won't find on other DAT's, which is why I think it's a later DAT model for sure. The DA-40 is also rack mountable and will take up three spaces in a traditional rack casing. It can record at up to a 48 kHz sample rate and a 16 bit depth as well. It also has a plethora of connections included analog balanced and unbalanced connections in addition the AES/EBU and SPDIF digital connections. Having said all this, unless you already have the DA-40, it's really not worth a second glance. The only other time I could see someone needing this would be if they wanted to bring their old DAT tapes back to life, but even then you probably already have the machine if you have the tapes. While the DA-40 is one of the best of it's kind in terms of being an effective DAT recorder, the bottom line is that it's an obsolete technology at this point...