DCC wishes

[mmay519]

In either 1992 or 1993, when Philips unveiled DCC, and Sony countered with Minidisc, I really wanted DCC to *win* in the worst way, for two reasons.

First of all, the backwards compatibility with analog cassettes was a big selling point (to me, at least.) Secondly, I read in _Hi-Fi News and Record Review_ (sometime in '92/'93) that they had tested Philip's PASC algorithm and compared/contrasted it to Sony's ATRAC (version 1, "shudder.") They discovered an interesting finding! When making subsequent copies of DCC, further data reduction under PASC did *not* occur, while Sony's ATRAC kept reducing the data with each new generation: I think by the seventh re-recording, the "music" was barely recognizable. Sony made major improvements with ATRAC over the years which (hopefully) took care of this problem.

I never did get a DCC recorder. I had to go to grad school for my job, and I never had the $700-$800 required to invest in the Philips 900 or the Tandy machine. In 1999, I did break down a purchase a Sony minidisc deck, which I used faithfully until it died four years later.

End of sermon/rant/rave. Maybe I've had too much coffee tonight....

Take Care,

Mike

[NAD613]

In either 1992 or 1993, when Philips unveiled DCC, and Sony countered with Minidisc, I really wanted DCC to *win* in the worst way, for two reasons.

First of all, the backwards compatibility with analog cassettes was a big selling point (to me, at least.) Secondly, I read in _Hi-Fi News and Record Review_ (sometime in '92/'93) that they had tested Philip's PASC algorithm and compared/contrasted it to Sony's ATRAC (version 1, "shudder.") They discovered an interesting finding! When making subsequent copies of DCC, further data reduction under PASC did *not* occur, while Sony's ATRAC kept reducing the data with each new generation: I think by the seventh re-recording, the "music" was barely recognizable. Sony made major improvements with ATRAC over the years which (hopefully) took care of this problem.

I never did get a DCC recorder. I had to go to grad school for my job, and I never had the $700-$800 required to invest in the Philips 900 or the Tandy machine. In 1999, I did break down a purchase a Sony minidisc deck, which I used faithfully until it died four years later.

End of sermon/rant/rave. Maybe I've had too much coffee tonight....

Take Care,

Mike

I also wish DCC had made it. Like you, I liked the fact that it was compatible with playing analog cassettes.

In the late 90's, after DCC had died out, J&R Music World had a Technics DCC deck on closeout for $99. It was the same model that had retailed for about $800 or $900 just a few years earlier.

[Web Police]

Back in the mid 1990's when DCC fell out of favor I purchased two New Technics decks new and found a third Technics on ebay. I also had a Philips and Optimus decks that I got for song. I also had accumulated nearly 200 DCC tapes most of them new. However 6 or 7 years back I sold them all on ebay again. Stupid move yep, I would like to have at least one deck and the tapes back again. *fit*

[mmay519]

WP--

How did you like the Optimus DCC machine? Stereophile had an article at that time that talked about Tandy's large investment in their DCC deck, and how it was *made in America.* I went to many RS stores, daydreaming about this machine.

It might be nice to have one, just to playback regular tapes. How did it sound with analog tapes?

Thanks!

Mike

[Web Police]

Well from my experiences, I'd buy the Technics or Philips decks over the Optimus as those decks were much better constructed in my opinion. The Optimus Deck had the cheap feel of plastic to it. The Technics and Philips had a much more robust look and feel to them and the remotes had many more functions on them. If I remember correctly the Optimus was designed to retail for hundreds less that the Technics and Philips, so they had to cut corners somewhere.

As far as Record/Playback in the digital realm all three were very similar as I couldn't tell them apart. There would have been subtle difference as comparing one CD player to another, but I couldn't really pickup anything with my ears.

In analog playback these decks were ok, however my analog tapes sounded a little better on some of my three head decks since these were the decks they were originally recorded on.

One of the nice features of the decks was the A to D and D to A converters as you could put an analog or digital signal into the deck and use either the digital or analog outputs.

About all I have left of these decks is memories and possible a copy of the owners manual for the Technics. I did upload a copy of it to HIFI enigne if you are interested. A few weeks ago I found a Optimus in a local pawn shop for $29.99, but I passed as on it.

[Emo-Fan]

I have the Radio Shack DCC machine and it works as well today as it did when it was fresh out of the box in October, 1993. I still use it for digital editing because you can erase and try again, unlike CD, where the entire CD is ruined if you make a mistake. My only problem was that I neglected to clean the heads after many hours of use. I went to a local RS store (this was a few years ago) and the manager of the store located an old (but still brand new in the box) head cleaner kit in the back storage room of another store in another state somewhere. Once I cleaned the heads, it sang again. If you keep the cleaning kit in good shape, you only need denatured alcohol instead of the alcohol cleaning fluid that comes with the kit.

I never saw the Philips or the Marantz models, but the RS model is pretty robust, at least compared with a lot of stuff made in China today. (That said, there's a lot of good Chinese stuff out there. See the recent article in Stereophile.)

[NAD613]

I have the Radio Shack DCC machine and it works as well today as it did when it was fresh out of the box in October, 1993. I still use it for digital editing because you can erase and try again, unlike CD, where the entire CD is ruined if you make a mistake.

That's exactly why I wish DCC would have caught on. I can't tell you how much I dislike CD-R's. The reason you mentioned is one of the reasons I went back to recording with cassettes. The problems I had with CD-R's I never had with cassettes. Cassettes are much more edit-friendly.

[Emo-Fan]

I remember, back in 1996, reading in the German and other European stereo magazines how bad DCC was. They even had photos of critics with fingers stuck in their ears! What nonsense! DCC has much the same resolution as CD. I made recordings of my own stuff using my (then current) Roland keyboards driven by sequencers. I'd hit PLAY on the 16-channel 32-track sequencer to check for mistakes, dynamics, balance, and the like, then make the recording onto DCC. Then I'd compare with playback. There were times I fooled myself: I'd try to stop the music and frantically hit the STOP button on the sequencer, only to realize that the DCC tape was running! Or vice versa. I'd momentarily forget which was which. I honestly couldn't tell the difference between DCC and the live sound.
My newest additions from 2001 (digital grand piano) and 2007 (synth) are much higher rez and, although CD does a good job (and DCC, too), I switched to R2R for my most important stuff. A tape moving at 15 ips is higher rez than even SACD. (Anyone have an SACD recorder for home use that they'll split with cheaply?!?)

I still use the trusty analogue cassette from time to time (mostly for stuff for Scorpion8) , but I hate noise reduction, and without it, I can't get the sound that the aforementioned media can bring. (That said, I never had a Nak Dragon...) Cassettes don't do it for me, at least not for my own music...

[MacGyver]

DCC was well engineered, but i prefer the look and feel of DAT, myself...

[Emo-Fan]

I wanted DAT back-in-the-day, but in the early nineties, if memory serves, a lot of 'em were available only through the so-called "grey market." Copyright issues (which inventions like SRMS never really resolved) abounded and that hampered DAT's success. There weren't any available--at least to me--at the time I purchased my DCC machine. Now, years later that it has effectively died out, I hear that there were head wear issues. Was DAT worth it? I'm guessing you'd know better than I. DCC used data compression that DAT didn't need, so theoretically at least, I guess DAT was better on paper. But, as a practical matter?... (DAT tapes are still available; DCC aren't.)

Love to hear your thoughts on that, Lady A.!

Anyone who owned a top-quality R2R back in 1983 when CD came out would have wondered what all the fuss was about. Few CDs (there are a number of extremely well-recorded ones out there now, though!!) can ever approach the warmth and rez that only a reel tape (@ 15 ips or faster) provides. But that's just me popping off...

[390FE]

Back when DCC came out (and I worked for the Shack) I tried to & came very close to getting the Optimus DCC deck to record digital on a regular normal cassette tape. I made modifications to the tape housing & had to add metal sensing foil to the tape. These things had to be done to fake out the machine making it think it was a blank DCC tape in the machine. Managed to get it to record for a very short time & played back. Unfourtantly it wasn't long enough to fully test & I couldn't get it to work again. I know something wasn't exactly right with my mods to the tape thus preventing it from reliably fakeing out the various "lockouts" to allow it to record in digital on that cassette.

I wish that the DCC decks also would have been able to record analog on analog tape & have better time & memo menus as well as programing/recording those menus & song titles on the DCC tape so that it would come up on the display when it was playing a home made tape just like the prerecorded tapes did.

The Radio Shack DCC deck WAS made in the USA by Radio Shack in their Tandy Computer manufacturing plant. But what was interesting was around that time period of when it was made & then discontinued Radio Shack sold their comuter manufacturing & plant to AST computers.

I don't know where that tape was I made mods to but maybe some day I can try again to fake out a DCC deck to record digital on a standard cassette tape.

[Emo-Fan]

As stated earlier, I still use mine. One thing, though: I went YEARS without cleaning the heads untill one day it finally would not record anything. It played fine, but the recording function had shut down completely. I had, some time ago, purchased one of those DCC dassette cleaning devices for use on it. No help at all, although the brushes on it came out a disgusting black. My next step was to use one of those long Q-tip swabs like physicians get out when they do throat cultures for strep. With it, I was able to access all the little intricate places in there. Lotsa dust and debris. I also sprayed it out with that compressed air stuff that people buy at places like WalMart for cleaning out computers. Now the thing works as well as ever. I guess the moral of the story is that even though the heads may be clean (the cleaning cassette with the alcohol that it came with saw to that) the armature and such may not be. So swab that deck!

As a side comment, that Radio Shack digital tape must have been pretty good: I never heard any dropouts and, as I said earlier, that thing saw hours upon hours of use of over many years. I'm trying to imagine ANY analogue cassette deck with a track record like that. I should also mention that after the aforementioned cleaning, I ran test recordings with my Denon test CD and the DCC deck acquitted itself without a hitch.

Wish they'd bring 'em back!! When it finally does die, it's gone forever!

[Jody Thornton]

In either 1992 or 1993, when Philips unveiled DCC, and Sony countered with Minidisc, I really wanted DCC to *win* in the worst way, for two reasons. .... I never did get a DCC recorder. I had to go to grad school for my job, and I never had the $700-$800 required to invest in the Philips 900 or the Tandy machine. In 1999, I did break down a purchase a Sony minidisc deck, which I used faithfully until it died four years later.

End of sermon/rant/rave. Maybe I've had too much coffee tonight....

Take Care,

Mike

I preferred MD, but even then, computer HDD based systems seem to have supplanted the need for either DCC or MD. If I wanted compatibility with analog cassettes, I'll just get a cassette deck.

[390FE]

As stated earlier, I still use mine. One thing, though: I went YEARS without cleaning the heads untill one day it finally would not record anything. It played fine, but the recording function had shut down completely. I had, some time ago, purchased one of those DCC dassette cleaning devices for use on it. No help at all, although the brushes on it came out a disgusting black. My next step was to use one of those long Q-tip swabs like physicians get out when they do throat cultures for strep. With it, I was able to access all the little intricate places in there. Lotsa dust and debris. I also sprayed it out with that compressed air stuff that people buy at places like WalMart for cleaning out computers. Now the thing works as well as ever. I guess the moral of the story is that even though the heads may be clean (the cleaning cassette with the alcohol that it came with saw to that) the armature and such may not be. So swab that deck!

As a side comment, that Radio Shack digital tape must have been pretty good: I never heard any dropouts and, as I said earlier, that thing saw hours upon hours of use of over many years. I'm trying to imagine ANY analogue cassette deck with a track record like that. I should also mention that after the aforementioned cleaning, I ran test recordings with my Denon test CD and the DCC deck acquitted itself without a hitch.

Wish they'd bring 'em back!! When it finally does die, it's gone forever!

There is one on E-Bay (I think the auction is still on). Last time I lookes no one had bid on it & opening bid was like $14.95 & shipping around the same.
The remote is MIA as well as the Owners Manual & the caps/plugs/covers for the optical in/out ports.

[NAD613]

I remember around 1999 or 2000, J&R Music World had a Technics DCC deck, the one that cost about $800-$900 new in 1994-95, for only $99 on closeout! I kind of wish I would have bought one.

[Emo-Fan]

Really! As great as decks like Nak made, DCC had much higher rez (even at 16/44.1), signal-to-noise ratios approaching 100 dB, wider dynamic range and more definition in general than any analogue cassette deck I've ever heard. And all this at a tape speed of 1 7/8 ips. An engineering marvel. And it played analogue cassettes in Dolby B or C with less wow and flutter (or at least no more) than premium analogue decks. But it died because it competed with MiniDisc and it's far too much trouble to FF and REW a tape for today's Close 'N' Play society. I truly believe records died out for the same reason: Too much maintenance with cleaning and zero-balancing tonearms and whatnot. Happily, the record dinosaur is being resurrected! It will live again!

[niklasthedolphin]

Really! As great as decks like Nak made, DCC had much higher rez (even at 16/44.1), signal-to-noise ratios approaching 100 dB, wider dynamic range and more definition in general than any analogue cassette deck I've ever heard. And all this at a tape speed of 1 7/8 ips. An engineering marvel. And it played analogue cassettes in Dolby B or C with less wow and flutter (or at least no more) than premium analogue decks. But it died because it competed with MiniDisc and it's far too much trouble to FF and REW a tape for today's Close 'N' Play society. I truly believe records died out for the same reason: Too much maintenance with cleaning and zero-balancing tonearms and whatnot. Happily, the record dinosaur is being resurrected! It will live again!

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying?
Are you saying DCC was better sounding than the best cassette decks?

"dolph"

[Emo-Fan]

To my ears, absolutely. But I'm really bothered by tape hiss. Some people are OK with that. DCC is silent. The best analogue cassettes aren't. Or if you do get 'em quiet, other problems show up. (Dolby C got the hiss out, but then there's that low-end grunge.)

Don't get me wrong--I'll take analogue over digital any day (except for those occasions when I WANT a hard, dry digital sound in my synths). But for tape, I want R2R. With good reel tape, you can push the VU meters +9 or more and get absolutely silent tpaes without NR. I never liked NR because of phase shift and EQ problems.

[niklasthedolphin]

To my ears, absolutely. But I'm really bothered by tape hiss. Some people are OK with that. DCC is silent. The best analogue cassettes aren't. Or if you do get 'em quiet, other problems show up. (Dolby C got the hiss out, but then there's that low-end grunge.)

Don't get me wrong--I'll take analogue over digital any day (except for those occasions when I WANT a hard, dry digital sound in my synths). But for tape, I want R2R. With good reel tape, you can push the VU meters +9 or more and get absolutely silent tpaes without NR. I never liked NR because of phase shift and EQ problems.

May I please Quote from Wiki......:

"The (theoretical) capacity of a DCC tape is 120 minutes, compared to 3 hours for DAT, however no 120-minute tapes were ever produced. Also, because of the switch to side B, there would always be an interruption in the sound at the end of side A, so the maximum theoretical continuous recording time was 60 minutes. DCC recorders could record from digital sources that used the S/PDIF standard, at 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz, or they could record from analog sources at 44.1 kHz. Philips used an audio compression codec based upon MPEG-1 Audio Layer I (MP1) and termed PASC (Precision Adaptive Sub-band Coding). PASC lowered the typical bandwidth of a CD recording of approximately 1.5 megabits per second to the much lower bitrate of 384 kilobits per second, a compression ratio of around 4:1."

What do you think about this?
And when I already have stated my opinion on cassette, when best, being better than CD, then you know my point of view on this.

;-)

"dolph"

[Emo-Fan]

We could argue this back and forth until the cows come home. I stated my opinion: I think DCC is better than analogue cassette. )Most analogue cassettes, anyway. I'm willing to concede that there are great analogue ecks out there that might really produce that you-are-there effect.) If the math and the figures disagree, so be it. If you read Stereophile Magazine, thre are many audiophiles who will tell you that the measurements don't begin to tell the whold story regarding what you are really hearing. Then we have audiophiles who will spend $$$ a foot for solid silver speaker cable. Or move their living room curtains a few cm this way or that in an effort to improve the bass, etc.

In short, what's neat about this hobby is: If you like it and it works for you , do it! Live and let live. If you like analogue cassettes and think they're better than CD, who am I to argue with you.

[niklasthedolphin]

We could argue this back and forth until the cows come home. I stated my opinion: I think DCC is better than analogue cassette. )Most analogue cassettes, anyway. I'm willing to concede that there are great analogue ecks out there that might really produce that you-are-there effect.) If the math and the figures disagree, so be it. If you read Stereophile Magazine, thre are many audiophiles who will tell you that the measurements don't begin to tell the whold story regarding what you are really hearing. Then we have audiophiles who will spend $$$ a foot for solid silver speaker cable. Or move their living room curtains a few cm this way or that in an effort to improve the bass, etc.

In short, what's neat about this hobby is: If you like it and it works for you , do it! Live and let live. If you like analogue cassettes and think they're better than CD, who am I to argue with you.

I will certainly not stop you in enjoying the music.
Go ahead.
Just the 16/44,1 thingy............. a bit far from 384 kb/s.

And yes, I find the analog sound more natural like "you-are-there" kind of thing..........and I don't move my curtains for getting to that.
;-)

"dolph"

[Chucky]

Hi, Just happened on the site recently and thought I would pipe up, chime in, whatever. For some reason I have been collecting DCC decks and blank tapes for the past few years. With two technics and one optimus deck and around 70 blanks.

I like the sound of the tape format but have not made up my mind on whether it sounds better than my modest NAK DR8. It certainly is conveniant w/ a good auto-reverse and timer function. No wow and flutter either.

The one complaint I have heard w/these is about head wear. I think that's a false assumption. The sound breaks up once in a while so I'll run an american recorder tape head cleaner through the machine and it's good for another 100 or so hours (I'm throwing that number out loosely).

Right now in fact I'm listening to a DCC tape of our local WORT thursday Jazz show and it sounds quite pleasent. The source material also has a big factor in my liking the format. To me, if the artist or group is to my liking I don't care what medium it's recorded on.

Chuck in Madison, WI