Who here has completely abandoned DCC Tape

C

chitownpete

Active Member
Remember in the early 90s they came out with the Digital Compact Cassette? DCC was a regular cassette that used Digital recording and the decks were capable of playing regular cassettes as well. I think it was introduced by Philips. Lasted about two years. Even more obscure than DAT. I guess maybe I should've asked if anyone even started using this silly format.
 
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Nope...tho i do remember it,only a couple of years on the market,just a small handful of models ever offered and very few sold i think...you still had to rewind,fast forward etc.

if one could get past and wanted a flawed process[compressed digital].sony's minidisc was clearly the better option...not that you could call minidisc a big success either,but it was maybe the more convenient of two fundementally flawed formats[from an audiophile perspective]
 
I have alot of my favorite albums recorded on DCC and play a few of the tapes monthly. I think it was one of the best sounding tape formats there was. Matter of fact, my player is a Philips.
 
Rodzilla said:
Nope...tho i do remember it,only a couple of years on the market,just a small handful of models ever offered and very few sold i think...you still had to rewind,fast forward etc.

if one could get past and wanted a flawed process[compressed digital].sony's minidisc was clearly the better option...not that you could call minidisc a big success either,but it was maybe the more convenient of two fundementally flawed formats[from an audiophile perspective]
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With threads dedicated to records, CDs, 8-tracks, and even cereal box records, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to pose the question about DCC. I never took the plunge into that format, so I suppose you could say that I abandoned it at its launch.

Regarding the comparison between DCC and MD, IMO the Mini-Disc had the better physical format and the poorer audio compression format. Both formats used lossy compression. DCC's PASC compressor achieved about a 4:1 storage space reduction relative to CD. Mini-Disc's ATRAC compressor threw away even more information to get to a 5:1 reduction. Neither one was sonically good enough to satisfy picky audiophiles.
 
They put out an Optimus DCC player at the Goodwill last time I was in there. It actually seemed to be put together fairly well. I vaguely even remember the format from when it came out. I did a little research on it and decided to let someone else make the score. I didn't know the details about the digital compression though. Thanks for the info.
 
I abandoned DCC. But I've reunited with it! I bought a Philips deck back in the early 90s. I returned it because it was a lot of money for something that couldnt record analog cassettes, only the expensive digital ones. I just bought an Optimus deck for $15 used. Its a solid machine. Same thing though, only records digital and finding a tape to record on is still expensive! Analog tape playback sounds like a cheap Walkman.

I've got a blank tape on order from eBay. We'll see how she records digitally when the tape arrives.
 
slow_jazz said:
If it could play regular cassettes why couldn't it record them?
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Thin-film head, that just couldn't handle the high current necessary for recording an analogue tape.
And I don't think any DCC machine could match a good analogue cassette deck in performance on analogue playback either. Analogue playback was just a convenience stuck on to help push the format, which otherwise had nothing in its favour.

The transport is likely more reliable than the R-DAT machines from most Japanese brands, but R-DAT used no compression of any sort, so sonically a big advantage.

Aiwa produced its own format of stationary-head digital cassette decks in very small numbers around 1983, that used a conventional Compact Cassette tape. One even used Olympus's Micro-cassette.
 
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