Stationary-head Digital Audio Tape. A bi-directional cassette tape designed for domestic digital recording. The head is stationary, as opposed to the rotating head of R-DAT. The tape speed is very low compared to professional stationary-head systems, such as DASH. The required data rate for stereo operation is achieved by distributing the 16-bit data over 20 data tracks in each direction. The sample rates are the same as for R-DAT, but 4-channel recording is possible at 32kHz with 12-bit nonlinear operation. S-DAT is not compatible with DCC as the latter does not conform to the S-DAT standard. See DAT.