Well, this certainly is odd. I was dubbing an old show which I'd cleaned up in the computer. It's a digital dub to DAT: SPDIF coax converted to optical via an Maudio box with no change in sample rate. During the original dub I allowed the DAT to run to the end to get continuous control track. Anyway, I was checking ID placements and decided to raise the level of one introductory monologue in the file and restart recording from that point. It sounded fine until I replayed the tape. From that point on it sounds like crap. I've never had that happen before, but I'm guessing it's a synch issue. Have you ever run into this problem?

Overload? If you're dubbing onto DAT and you've just pushed up the level could you be overlaoding at some stage, the format converter for instance?

No, the section which I boosted is still at a peak level of only 30%. The whole file has been normalized to peak at 98% of full scale. Further, the distortion sounds like an overdriven mic pre, NOT digital distortion.
I'll just redo the entire dub from the beginning to a fresh tape.
Thanx