DCC in 2020 - and beyond
If you saw the last Patreon update you’ll be aware that I’d fallen behind a bit due to some video false starts.
I hope you don’t mind me attempting to catch up by making a couple of simpler videos like this one where there's relatively little to go wrong.
In this, I’m taking a look at a couple of new releases on Digital Compact Cassette.
Now there’s niche and then there’s DCC…so I’m really not expecting this video to do gangbusters, but after this one, I think I'm now almost back on track.
Have a good week - well as good as you can, all things considered.
Comments (33)
I wonder what chemistry was used for the tapes? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was nothing more than what you could find in standard Type II cassettes.
Talking of obscure formats I saw these https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/m.html?_odkw=&_ssn=rewindv34&hash=item420dccad4b%3Ag%3A0iYAAOSwJ4pd5-0n&item=283699359051&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2046732.m570.l1313&_nkw=video+8&_sacat=0 and thought of Techmoan. Someone I knew actually bought an 8mm home VCR rather than VHS, Betamax, or V2000. maybe a Sony EV-A300EC
Every time you talk about the DDC it makes me sad that I missed it in the 90's...seems like a great format.
Same. I feel this format could have a much longer period in time and the same revisions as MiniDisc. Too bad it never had the chance.
I wonder if modern modulation techniques like COFDM/QAM and better codecs like Opus / USAC could be used to create a DCC like tape deck just with ordinary tapes and a four track head, where all four tracks are used in conjuction in a single direction. Nowadays such DSP can be easily implemented on a SBC like a Raspberry Pi. Opus/USAC gives essentially transparent reproduction at 96 kbps. That's only 4th of the bandwith of DCC. Opus even has an additional packet loss and forward error correction support built in. Would be interesting to experiment with that :) I guess the non-plus ultra would be to do this with a crappy Tanashin mechanism, essentially boosting it's capabilities. It would be nice if such a deck could be assembled from pieces, I've seen a bare mechanism in one of Techmoan's videos, wonder where he acquired that.
The real problem would be the data transfer rate. Even when using all four tracks, you'd still have to spend minutes waiting for the soundfile to load. Much like how it was done in the old Commodore 64 days... My guess is that even a C90 cassette could probably only fit a few minutes of hi-fi digital audio. So cassette singles that would take a longer time to load than play... 🤨 Other than that, I like the idea. 😃 Edit: According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_tape "The typical encoding method for computer data was simple FSK, typically at data rates of 500 to 2000 bit/s, although some games used special, faster-loading routines, up to around 4000 bit/s. A rate of 2000 bit/s equates to a capacity of around 660 kilobytes per side of a 90-minute tape." Even if we could quadruple that, using modern DSPs, it's still only about 5 MiBs per tape. 😕
Techmoan, the man who brought back the DCC ;-) My father should have watched it more often, he might have thrown away a few DCCs, unaware of their value...
A Windows 98 computer with a real parallel port isn't particularly common either I would have thought
63 on Ebay.co.uk as I type, lots of them working with Buy it Now for around £90 to £100. After all they were very popular back in around 1999. In comparison only six DCC decks for sale in the UK and four of those aren't working.
Do the extra bits get spit out over the machines digital out or are they just trapped forever?
They're trapped in the PASC decoder on the way out. Depending on which machine you have, the digital output has 16 or 18 bits. Or 20 if you're lucky enough to have one of the rare Japanese Victor machines that we like to call "4th generation" at the DCC Museum. It's theoretically possible to connect a 24 bit MP1 decoder to the internal I2S sub-band bus in a DCC recorder/player. You need a microcontroller or computer that picks up the bits according to the information in e.g. the SAA3323 datasheet, and port an MP1 decoder with 24-bit support to the microcontroller / microprocessor. I think it's possible to use a Raspberry Pi or a Teensy 3.5 or a Propeller 2 to do this kind of thing; they have I2S ports and probably enough power to do an MP1 decode in software.
Always like seeing these DCC updates! Especially enjoyed the bit showing the DCC Studio application, I didn't know there was ever any DCC consumer software like that. Tidy little ThinkPad you've got there, too.
I bought that ThinkPad perhaps a couple of years ago just to demo this software one day. Definitely worth it for those 30 or so seconds it appears in this video for.
Really enjoyed this despite not having a DCC player. The care that is going into the DCC Museum's releases is impressive.
I'm in a Techmoan video! Yay! And not just with my DCCU tool for converting MP1 files to the DCC-studio format, but I also wrote the DCC Museum page in the booklet of Ben Liebrand's DCC, shown at 6:07.
If you could completely revive one of the audio formats that has gone the way of the dodo which one would you save? Personally I'd like to be able to buy new audio cassette tapes as I miss the TDK SA and MA tapes not just something based on old stock.
Hard to pick one - but I very much would have liked Elcaset to have been a successful audio format. I’d also have enjoyed seeing an Elcaset Walkman too ;-)
Diving into the cupboard now to dig up that DCC-Link cable 🥁
If you’ve really got one - that’d pay for Christmas this year.
Very nice video! And I am now a patron of the DCC museum. I was surprised at the process of producing these tapes. I’ll have to dig out my DCC machine. I think I only have 2 tapes.
Thanks Keith and all others supporting our cause of keeping the dcc format alive.
I'll be watching this and I hope you have a good week too
You know how young children often prefer to play with the packaging rather than the toy inside? That's very much how I felt about that wonderful video box! As usual when I see your videos on these legacy music devices, my initial response is to want one - especially the open reel tape recorders, but DCC and even Minidisks look so cool. I so nearly ordered one of those German tape recorders you have featured, but realising how many vinyl records I could get for the same money stopped me. There's something about the technology I find fascinating (which is why I subscribe, obviously), but it must be a masculine thing - I've never known any woman to be even slightly interested in the means of playing the music, only in the music itself. (which is probably how it should be!) If ever I get to see the Mona Lisa, I'll probably be wondering how they made the picture frame. Great video, Mat, thank you - enjoy the rest of your week!
As you'll know by now - I always like to see something moving when music is playing - and even though it's not tape reels or a spinning record, the videos in this box seem to trigger that same feeling. It's silly really as I can just click on YouTube and watch any pop video, perhaps it's the small screen that does it. It's hard to pin it down, but it does feel a little bit magical whereas the same video played on my phone wouldn't trigger the same reaction.
Do somebody knows which MP1 encoder the DCC Museum is using to encode the master WAVs? I've found some kind of MP1 encoder some years ago, but it wasn't high quality. Since I'll probably never own a DCC player I thought this way I can give it a go and listen how good DCC is (MP1 384kbps) with my own music. (Similarly how you can compare Bluetooth audio codecs with this browser tool: https://btcodecs.valdikss.org.ru/sbc-encoder/) I expect it to be similar to a 256kbps MP2.
Jac Goudsmit should know - hopefully he'll be along in a bit to share some tips.
It's great to see enthusiasts keeping history alive Matt they do a fantastic job. I'm trying to locate a company that can press Hybrid SACDs at the moment. SACD is another format that refuses to die. I think 2 companies, one in Japan and the other in Europe, I believe Austria still make them on a regular basis. DCC was never a format that I got into but nice to see it lives on.
Yes I should really get around to featuring SACD - I've got the things I need, but I need to take the time to better understand the ways the audio can differ from CD.
What a lovely video. It's so wonderful to see music artists try their best to push back against streaming. I mean we all know streaming is the future, but that doesn't mean we can live a little in the past. Celebrate the media that helped music become the beautiful art form it is today.
Great video. Learned so much in 12mins. As always, fantastic work.
Every time I see one of these types of legacy format releases it makes me happy that it’s still happening in 2020 but sad that we’re probably getting down to the very last of the “new-old stock” inventory. Our only hope is that some rich electronics factory owner in Shenzhen is a retro music geek and starts up production of legacy format blanks and players - it’d be nice to have new minidiscs and DCCs manufactured again. Even the patents must be all expired at this point...
Cassettes aren't even that hard. It would probably be possible to get new DCC cassettes produced by any injection molding factory. The problem is the tape: it has to be pretty much the same as video tape, only narrower. And Chrome tape cannot be produced anymore because of the pollution caused by the side products.
After watching that I feel like racing out to buy a DCC machine. I have no use for one but that packaging just sold me.