DCC in 2023

Interesting. DCC is the one audio product I've never had to work on or even used. I jumped from Tapes to MD.

I'm sure you've mentioned this in the past but I just realized the museum is in Cathedral City! That absolutely blew me away because I figured this would have been some sort of project out of Berlin! Cathedral City is kind of a end-of-the-world variety of exurbia! I suppose it's a good place for storage... arid and dry. And although I don't think it matters much with digitally recorded music, river basins are really the best places to record, tectonically speaking.

"Charming" is a word I use typically when I am talking about what's missing from cultural nowadays. I found the simplistic artwork and design of the DCC output charming. It was totally unnecessary but neither were messages on LP matrices. I really appreciate that sort of thing and I feel it is a pity that there aren't more venues for that sort thoughtfulness. But even as I write this I am recalling that my most recent iPhone has a little pinball game that you can stumble across. So perhaps charm isn't totally extinct!

Hi Mat, now that you've revisited DCC, I'm reminded of something. I have a DCC175 which, as you know, is the only remaining recorder with an interface for writing text to DCCs. However, this needs a special interface cable which isn't easy to find, so 2 or 3 years ago, I thought I'd do some experimentation to see if I could build an interface out of a Raspberry Pi Pico, ESP32 etc. (I do this for a living). I did some research and saw that DCC Museum have 2 or 3 of the official interfaces that have been donated. I reached out by leaving a message on their site, asking if they would be willing to sell or loan me an official interface so I can reverse engineer the protocols in use.. I got a confirmation email but never heard any more, maybe if you're talking to them, ask if this is something they could help with. I must look at the protocol decoder they have produced, perhaps there's some commonality. Great to see DCC alive and kicking, always enjoy your videos.. G

Excellent video. I was completely unaware of DCC format. It's amazing how much info is crammed on those tapes. Colorful artwork with lyrics - mind blowing. I like Philips DCC-730 front panel design. Also mechanical sounds when reading digital content are oddly appealing.

I was very surprised that each tape had it's own somewhat-custom artwork, menu layout and colors. All that effort for no one to use it! Thanks for diving into this!

Excellent video. I was interested in both MD and DCC when they came out and ended up being an early adopter of Minidisc, it's still my favourite physical audio format. Despite this I really admire Philips for making dcc. If it had come out a few years earlier in the 80s and had cheap Walkman type players from the outset, it would probably have done well. I love the extra hidden metadata that Philips built into the system. If I had dcc, I would probably be buying one of those displays from the dcc museum.

My, I had no idea dcc could do all this. I was a big fan of teletext ( and it hasn't been replaced with anything better, as far as I am concerned) I kind of feel bad about not even knowing about it back in the day... Then, I had nothing even close to the money needed

You mentioned in this video that the Divine recording had been remastered with AI based tools. This is also what I do professionally - although my tools are proprietary. Since Candy Apply Blue has reached out to you in the past and they have a fantastically open approach to distribution rights, - I thought I'd include this link. Despite YT's used of lossy codecs - most people who listen to the source vs. processed deem the processed to be superior sounding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMgNo7TH9rQ

Oddly - Cassettes could make a comeback if they coded the audio in a similar way that the last generation of phone-based MoDems (Such modems did NOT exist when DCC was engineered) did. The 2 tracks used for stereo audio could be broken into (4) tracks with timing offsets (to deal with dropouts) & error correction formatted to get a single 128-192 kbps VBR modem-screamlike audio signal delivered into the deck's electronics. Then, using a high-efficiency codec like OPUS (which didn't exist when DCC was engineered) - the decoded digital signal could be turned into audio. The result would be far better than analog cassette - but the codec would still be lossy (echoing back to DCC's PASC [pun]).

Seeing you smiling with Ralf is very nice. Ralf seems like a fine upstanding man* to drop off these items for your use. It's a very nice video. Once again, your hard work shines through. Sincerely, take care. 🤍 *he's not sitting down, anyway, or is he?

That's neat. The teletext looks like it uses level 2.5 features (smooth mosaics and more text sizes)

I really liked the Toby Myers entry in The Band text, how wonderful was that.

Hah, the animated lyrics reminded me of Chris ‘Frank Sidebottom’ Sievey’s Camouflage single, which came with lyrics in a ZX81 program on the b-side https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VNvL1FgxwzM

Techmoan is still Mr. DCC 😉. So cool and weird that there has been a lot of information on those cassettes that nobody was able to view... The Teletext look also makes it some kind of retro, in the Netherlands, even when analog television was shut down, people were still fan of teletext and used it online and in apps on their phones!

So I'm confused because you showed a DCC device that output a video signal before didn't you?

I used DAT tape in the studio back in the 90's.....and still have a couple of machines - closest thing I've ever owned to dcc. I always thought dcc was a cool domestic product but it never got a lot of attention here in Australia, I think price was a big factor....I never new it had the features you explained on this video!

The Pink Flamingos imagery on the new DCC packaging was a nice surprise. If anyone hasn’t seen it, it’s a great film for all the family.

would be fun to have a busta rhymes albun like that

Never thought I'd see "Produced by Bobby Orlando" on any format you'd demonstrate! Soon-to-be Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant, in his then career of working for Smash Hits, was sent to New York to interview Sting, an artist he didn't really rate much. Whilst there, he went to visit Bobby Orlando, of whom Neil and Chris (Lowe) were big fans of, and Neil gave him a demo tape. Straight away, Orlando offered to produce them. It's only when they dispensed of his services did they hit the big time! If you haven't had the "pleasure" of the original Bobby Orlando-produced West End Girls... https://youtu.be/PKB2bYYYTYw?si=YC4MI0O-lTOmbN3k I'd love to own some titles on DCC, despite not having a player, but like MiniDiscs, eBay prices for pre-recorded stuff are ludicrous.

Isn't physical media, of all types, infinitely more interesting than downloads or streaming? Or is is that just me?

Cool info about something I knew nothing about, thanks! I did look at DATs back in the late 90's for recording but never took the plunge, so it's interesting to hear your explanation of the difference. By the way, at 16:13 could it be that it's supposed to be the side-view of a jewel setting?

I'm comfortable enough in my masculinity to admit that the Divine DCC is the coolest thing I've seen this week, even if I'm a tad disappointed that 'You Think You're A Man' was omitted from that compilation.

For what it's worth, personally I'm not bothered at all if you release simultaneously on Patron and YouTube. The exclusivity isn't a big deal.

I'm amazed by the fact there's this elaborate teletext thing noone could view on flippin' cassettes, but even the basic cd-text is so rare on CDs

Some cool new stuff you've got there and while I'm not in the market for any DCC gear, I find the history of the format quite interesting (as well as all the format histories you've shown on the channel). And though the only thing I know of DCC is what I've learned from watching Techmoan, I agree with the sentiment of the "crossover" between digital and analog which gives DCC its endearing quality. In recalling your story of going to a demo of DCC and MiniDisc in 1992, you told of how the audience laughed while the DCC machine took an unusually long time to fast-forward to find a particular track. So how did the format go from laughable to endearing? I'm guessing that nowadays people are so used to digital music they've become jaded which makes those old-fashioned analog formats seem more quaint and a partial reason for the resurgence in LPs and cassettes. You likely weren't laughing along with the others back in 1992 and as you've mentioned in previous videos on MiniDisc, the MD format had its own problems at launch regarding the unit's size, weight, and cost, which delayed its widespread adoption--particularly in the US.

7: 56 I know I'm much too pedantic about this, but the ITTS information (which includes song titles, album title and text information) is NOT in the 9th track of the DCC tape. All that information is part of the SYSINFO data that's encoded along with the audio on the 8 main tracks. The tape is divided in "tape frames", each of which contains 8192 bytes of audio data and 128 bytes SYSINFO. The audio data is encoded at 384 kilobits per second, so the SYSINFO effectively runs at 6000 bits per second, quite a bit faster than the old computer tapes. The auxiliary track (the 9th track) runs at 1/12th the bitrate of the main tracks, and holds the markers. The reason the data rate is slower there is so that the recorder can "listen" for the markers and recognize what they are during fast-forward and rewind, and update the display or stop at a track that you want to go to. Also the reason that they're on a separate track is that they can be recorded and erased without recording and erasing the main tracks. The third-generation recorders like your DCC-730 can also store song titles for user tapes in the 9th track, but earlier recorders can't do this. However all the track titles, album titles, ITTS text etc. on prerecorded tapes is in SYSINFO in the main tracks, not in the AUXINFO on the auxiliary track.

Holy crap. To think all of this effort has been trapped on DCC tapes, possibly never to be seen u til now. My hats off to the DDC museum; this is truly a special feat

man i wish i was rich enough when DCC was new and relevant to really dig into it and other also-ran digital audio formats. alas i was a poor HS/uni student.