Forgotten Audio Formats: DCC & Elcaset
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 พ.ค. 2014
- An affectionate look at two failed, but entertaining cassette formats.
Information on the other items featured in this video HERE: goo.gl/LchEls
CORRECTION - The Elcasets were offloaded in Finland, not Norway.
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When I was young, very young, I asked my parents to get an DCC recorder as christmas gift. My first cassette I got was "Cats". Later on I met my todays wife at a Cats-Fanclub, I had never join if I did not get that tape. So I'm still in live with that DCC format :)
...and you're still in *love* with your wife and not just the DCC format I hope? :D
Either way, an awesome linked chain of events and a cute story to tell! :)
The reason DCC didn't take off is because the case wasn't sharp and did not come in handy to scrape frost off your car window like a standard cassette case.
Which came first - the hinges breaking from normal use or them breaking from using them as a scraper? Just kidding. That's one of the things I hated about the cases. The same thing with CD cases. If they had used a different plastic (stronger, more flexible, softer?) to begin with, for example - PP (polypropylene) instead of PS (polystyrene), then I think the issue of broken hinge tabs could have been largely avoided. I'm sure that there are at least a few other good reasons though as to why they didn't go that route. And while I'm at it, I'll complain about the design of the case of both cassettes and CD. A better design alone could have reduced the issue of broken hinges. Combine that with the usage of different (better) plastic and the overall result could have probably been very few broken case issues. There have been some CD case designs (along with using different plastic) that appear to have solved this but it's a case (no pun intended) of too little too late.
DCC cases also don't make sweet Hot Wheels jumps either. Sorry, I was too young at the time, so that's what I used cassette cases for. lol
Sure sure, but it is funny it always the best format that goes.
Always enough of excuses.
just take vhs, betamax and 2000.
The worst was chosen.
Geuss it is due to there always most money to earn with the worst.
Do not buy the politic excuses. it is always about the money.
Well, there was a lot of "experimentation" back in the 90s with all kinds of formats, but the downfall of most of them was still clumsy tape system you had to rewind/forward... hello SDcards!! )
VHS was not the worst format.
Betamax failed because of Sony being too selective to allow 3rd party manufacturers to build Betamax machines. Their licencing was more expensive than JVC, who allowed companies to build cheaper VHS machines in order to get them into people's homes / business quickly. Nothing to do with porn either as most people think - that's a myth. VHS is / was a great format.
A long time ago I worked at Philips Southampton UK on DCC. I did computer simulations of the MPEG-1 audio and also some chip design on the final third generation chip. It was Philips first million transistor chip back around 1995. Some of the building blocks in that chip were used in later portable CD players.
One major problem with DCC portables is the tape speed is the same as standard Compact Cassette and if you waved the player around the tape would slow down and the data would stop. The Minidisc played the disc faster into a memory buffer so it could cope.
The analog playback was improved because it used negative feedback to cancel the magnetic field from the tape with a wire cancelling the field in the digital tape head. So the response was basically flat unlike the coil based heads that have massive bass rolloff because the head output is proportional to frequency.
Cool. I seem to remember that DCC's compression scheme was also called PASC. Am I right? I had high hopes for it, but it never caught on. I would have loved a car DCC stereo.
Yeah it was PASC. I did a school project on DCC vs MiniDisc when they were new. MD's compression was called ATRAC. PASC had superior sound quality on paper, with about a 4:1 compression ratio compared to ATRAC's 5:1, and IIRC a much more advanced psychoacoustic model with adaptive sub-bands where ATRAC used fixed bands. So I thought that DCC would win over MD because of the better sound and the back-compatibility of players with old tapes. Of course, that didn't happen - MD won because it was more compact and far more convenient, with facilities like near-instant track skip that made DCC seem slow and clunky.
I'm curious: how can it sound better than cd if it uses something like mp3?. (instead of a loseless uncompressed format like cd). even a 320kb mp3 is not the same as the original cd and there's a loss. was the compression better than mp3 or loseless?
excellent insight, thank you @MikeJames
I had a philips dcc car stereo (still have it). It was great.
Elcaset could've been an amazing format to master onto, like a more protected reel-to-reel equivalent for a stage of the production where editing usually won't be necessary anymore.
One of my college roomies back in 1984/85 had a stereo system with an 8-Track tape deck. There were still a lot of pre-recorded albums sold back then. Such wonderful memories!
I used a DCC as a cheaper alternative to a DAT machine.
It sounded great to my ears and was very reliable.
Wow, those cassettes are so cool. Wish they were still around today like vinyl making a come back!
Yeah every comeback that is not CD, MiniDisco or DCC makes me roll my eyes. I especially wish one or both of the latter two would get a real revival as in consumer electronics manufacturers and record companies bringing them back.
Thanks for posting this, very entertaining!
I never even knew about Elcaset until maybe a few years ago; I think this is the first time I saw a video of it. I was a big fan of DCC though, but I was probably biased, because I lived in EIndhoven, the home town of Philips, in that time.
DCC came out in 1992 and had been in development since 1987 or so. There are pictures online (from a magazine) of an early prototype DCC recorder based on Philips 1987 top-of-the-line cassette deck, the FC567. I worked at Philips for a while between 1995 and 1997 and met several engineers who had worked on DCC and they told me that at first, they simply used TDK SA-X tape until the official tapes (which were based on video tapes) were ready. Your DCC-730 and DCC-951 are identical on the inside, by the way, except for the ESI(?) bus on the back of the DCC-951 which is only for interaction with the 900-series.
You also show the DCC-175 in the video which is a rarity in the world of DCC: Philips released that at the end of 1995 (in the Netherlands only, as far as I can tell, but there are indications that it may have been available in Finland too) along with a cable that you could use to connect it to a PC running Windows 3.1 or later. As far as I know, fewer than 1000 cables were made (much fewer than DCC-175's) so the cables are even more rare. I bought a DCC-175 with cable on the first day it was available, and paid almost 1000 guilders for it, the equivalent of about US $800 in today's money. That was about 30% more than I had paid for my DCC-730.
If you had the DCC-175, the cable and the software that came with it, you could transfer a DCC tape to hard disk (in PASC i.e. MP1 format) or vice versa. It would also let you used the DCC as backup device but that was pretty useless: the backup software didn't support the new long filenames that had just been introduced with Windows 95, and the speed was the same as for audio (384 kilobits per second) which was just way too slow to be practical. The audio editing software was kinda interesting though: it would let you edit DCC audio in copy-and-paste style, and do some minor effects like filtering. And you didn't even need the audio card in your PC (if you happened to have one -- not everyone did in those days): it would use the recorder to encode and decode the PASC compressed audio.
You could also compose mix tapes from songs on your hard disk, and then tell the program to automatically record it to tape. I did that for a while when I had a DCC player in my car: I would play a mix tape on my way to work and once a week or so when I got tired of a song or bought some new music, I would re-record the tape and it took almost no effort at all because all I had to do was put the songs in order and hit the start button.
A nice thing about editing DCC tapes on the computer was that you could edit the song titles and album name with the PC keyboard and of course that was a lot easier than using the remote control (and you would be able to use symbols like the apostrophe). And it was possible to record and play continuous music for a much longer time than a cassette would allow: I was in the fortunate position to have access to a CD-recorder at work, and that made it possible to store up to 4.5 hours of continuous music on a CD-ROM in near-CD quality. I just needed the computer and the DCC-175 and cable to play it back because it was in PASC format. Later on, some MPEG player programs started supporting the under-documented stuffing bits in the PASC/MP1 format so that made it possible to play the CD's through my PC's audio card without help from the recorder. Good times!
+Jac Goudsmit Fascinating information - thank you very much for posting this.
So happy to discover this channel! I've been enjoying your reports. Back at the end of the DCC days, I got a unit from Radio Shack. Finding blank cassettes was not easy for me but I learned a trick were you can drill a little hole in a specific position on chrome based regular cassettes and the player will record in the DCC format. It was a hit and miss experience drilling holes on chrome analog cassettes, but what a joy! I was thrilled by the fact that text could be recorded.
DAT had the capability of having text as well in the subcode channels (at a minimum, track titles) but that seems to have been used only by Tascam on some of their (pro) models, and therefore, not supported by other manufacturers. Meaning that the text was not displayed on other manufacturers' machines.
And what happened if you played such a tape on an analog player? C'mon, you've got to have tried that at least once 🤣
i have a 1993 chrome cassette Connie Francis The Singles Collection UK. The cassette sais recorded with Chrome II ,but it plays Normal and it has a big hiss. The place where the cassettes were recorded, they did not put the right case...so i have to willfully drill a hole each side for chrome.[because my machine is automatic]...I suspect the place of making them was Netherlands...and not UK. they should take more care when making tapes. then i'll rerecord it from the cd equivalent.
@@lindemann316 me too, I want to know!!!
I'm so glad I found this channel, this is my favorite pass time, going to goodwill finding old audio equipment and spending the day learning
I bought a DCC machine from Radioshack on clearance because I couldn't afford a MiniDisc. Both retailed at $700-$800, but the DCC was only $80 on clearance, so my high-school self knew which to choose. I used it to mix-down tracks from my Tascam 424, and even years later, my band was using it to record our shows in stunning clarity! I also loved that I could use it for my regular cassettes and play them back with many of the new features like track search.
Thanks to the lockdowns and finding your channel whilst bored, I am now the proud owner of an Akai Reel to Reel, a Sony EL-5 Elcaset (the Mediatech version in black) an 8-Track recorder and a Technics 3-Head cassette deck. My wife and friends think I’m loony but everyone wants to look at them and hear them play.
I know you probably won't see this being an old video but thanks for making these. Makes me smile during these personally shitty times. Cheers man. 👍✌️
Glad I could help.
jesus christ you summoned the man himself
My dad had that pioneer receiver. Man lots of memories of parties with that gear.
The bit at the end perfectly sums up why I've recently begun collecting tapes and records.
I'm just shy of twenty years old, so I was born well into the CD era and grew up well into the iPod era. But I'm still absolutely fascinated by the systems that were used to play music, something that nowadays is so simple, back before I was born. There's something oddly charming about analog formats, and thoroughly impressive about the equipment used to play them; nobody remembers the inventor of helical scan even though he gave a generation better, more portable music. Plus, it's a great conversation piece.
I'm amazed how that complicated mechanism was made that early makes you appreciate the hard working to get the best device you wish for , make it easier to enjoy music ...
I respect it , and respect your efforts to highlights on this rare equipment.
Thanks lad
I've enjoyed every second.
I miss my mini-disc players.. I had one of the last ones Sony ever made, an RH-10.. I really wanted the MZ-RH1 those were beautiful... loved the OLED on both.
I've only just discovered your channel and I'm blown away.
Thanks for the memories!
I was lucky to find a massive lot of about 500 Elcaset tapes from the UK. Many of them contain live performances recorded off the BBC network. They sound great and definitely are a lot of fun to listen to on my EL-7 machines.
I love strange old formats. I'm going to have to get some DCC stuff.
holy shit!! it was like fucking magic when you put that Elcaset in there, it sounds amazing!!....
*now i want one so bad!*
yes, i could totally tell how amazing it sounded after being run though his cameras compression then his editing softwares compression and finally youtubes compressor
Damn I can't believe the Elcaset player is from the 70s! it still looks awesome and modern today! and pretty well built unlike today's disposable nature of electronic devices.
Love this stuff. I have an old pioneer home stereo that is probably 30 to 35 years old. My wife tries to sneak it into a yard sale once in a while but it still works great and I hope to have it for a long time to come.
a video with Prince music in it? that HASN'T been deleted? huge props to you my dude
Thank you Mat for another great review. This is the first time I heard about the Sony Elcaset, very interesting. The DCC format on the other hand was an inexplicable failure. On paper it looked a winner: A digital format which was compact AND you could play your compact casette collection in the same harware. Why it failed is beyond me.
Never heard of those 2 formants. Thanks for the informative video.
And youtube really needs to do something about that ridiculous copyright nonsense.
This DCC looks an awful lot like DAT (Digital Audio Tape) which by the way I've never used for audio, but hard drive backup back in the mid 90's. DAT backup tape drives were like a grand back then. Interesting stuff...
@@BillAnt Big difference is that DCC didn't use rotating heads. Instead, IIRC they recorded something like 20 or 40 linear tracks next to each other to store the amount of data needed.
@@erwintimmerman6466 and seems it is more reliable than helical rotating heads. (logical).
Techmoan's portable DATs do not work,/does not read DAT tapes while the portable DCC still works. What a difference! :-)
FUN FACT!
I bought my Sony EL-7 in the early 80's here in Norway and used it in my DJ work.
Rumour has it that when Sony & Technics realized the format wasn't going to fly they dumped all the machines and tapes in Scandinavia.
Talking of forgotten formats, I'm so old I remember using my trusty Hitachi PCM-V300E to record various music events, a short lived digital platform that used VHS tapes to capture 2 channel audio in true PCM format.
To this day I blame my hernia on lugging that beast around.
Thank you for your terrific video. I was 16 years old in 1976 and I used to visit the local Lasky's hi-fi shop to stand and stare at the wonderful Elcaset decks. By the time I could afford one, they had disappeared!
jono10531089 Lasky's was still the place to go in the early 80s. You may enjoy flicking through one of their old catalogues on my website. www.techmoan.com/blog/2013/4/9/something-for-you-to-read-while-im-offline-for-a-while.html
Techmoan Thanks for the link - it was a real blast from the past. Shame about the car competition expiring! Although your catalogue was a bit 'new' for my schooltime memories, it jogged my memory of the Lasky's own brand hi-fi (ha!) cassette decks that I used to peruse. They were badged as AUDIOTRONIC but my schoolmate and I called them AUDIOCHRONIC as they were not exactly 'high end'. They did at least feel they might be attainable, but alas I never managed to afford one at the time. I have got an Armstrong receiver in my loft that I bought a year or two ago - another thing that I had drooled over. I even bought a TELETON amplifier recently to replace the one which expired when I was a teenager - I just missed it! I bet you are glad to find that you are not the only person obsessed with retro hi-fi. Keep up the good work with all of your excellent videos on all tech matters, even though I must admit that the Elcaset, DCC and vertical turntable were my favourites. You really deserve to be on TV.
MP3 is a subset of MPEG 1, technically being MPEG 1, Audio Layer 3.
Interesting
Wow! Great piece. Never even heard of an Elcaset! Sony love to create new formats!!!!
Sony is definitely the king of failed formats. One of my favourites is the MicroMV - a tiny camcorder video tape - perhaps I'll make a video about that one day (I've still got my MicroMV camera somewhere).
Techmoan Yes please! :)
It's always a pleasure watching your videos, it makes that few minutes of my day very enjoyable.
I owned a Marantz DD-82 for a while in the 90s. What you said about the audio quality from a standard cassette was true for me as well, I found it gave a much richer, clearer sound than my tape deck and I ended up using it as my primary tape deck for that reason. I did have a few blank DCCs which I offloaded some analogue content onto and they sounded fantastic. But ultimately I stopped using it because getting the DCC tapes proved difficult (only Richer Sounds ever seemed to sell them, and then only sporadically) and when they stopped selling them they became almost impossible to locate. It's a shame it never took off, especially since they were backwards compatible with cassettes, but I guess after CD it was never going to, as CD had the double whammy of being portable and quick to change tracks.
Since you are into rare audio formats, have you thought about trying out a PCM adaptor? It's a thing which allows you to record CD quality digital audio on a plain simple VHS (or Betamax) tape and requires an ordinary VHS recorder. It was quiet common in studios before DAT and the CD's 44.1/16 resolution comes from this medium. TH-cam has some videos if you search for it, it's quiet interesting.
István Nagy
For a good audio quality , use a HIFI stereo vhs recorder . Low end vhs machines records and plays the audio only in mono mode . I tried to record audio on my hifi vhs recorder : it worked well . I still not have this machine , video heads were worn and too expensive for the used machine that i had , it had too many hours of use ( i played a lot of rental vhs tapes when there was nothing good to watch on tv , the vcr had audio outputs , i plugged it on my vintage stereo , the sound was a blast on action moovies , home theaters were too expensive in the beginning thats why i did not bought one ) , and i had to restore the deck too ( belts , clutches , pinch roller ...)
Love your vintage hifi videos! Keep up the good work!
Seeing your videos made me think to get some old audio stuff from the 70's and from the 80's myself. I miss that old stuff.
I have the DCT-2000 Radio Shack deck that my wife accidentally dropped out of the back end of her Blazer back in 2000. It keeps wanting to shut off when playing. Everything sounded fantastic playing through it. To me it was fascinating that prerecorded cassettes sounded better through that rather than through my Technics cassette deck. Minimal noise, even without the Dolby on a normal cassette. The Digital Cassette sounded incredible. Thank you for sharing.
How the heck can you Thumb Down content like that? It's great. I love it. Thanx a lot!
I want to thumb it down just for seeing your righteous hipster comment, & to piss on guys like you all day long.
therealKINDLE
Nice. (look up that word-and also 'sarcasm')
It was the WD40 thing I think.
Co Ty tu robisz, Sławek...
*PLEEEEEEEEESE - NO MORE COMMENTS ABOUT WD40 - it's all been said before, see earlier comments before re-posting*
+Techmoan dont use wd40
Screw them. Your channel is pure gold man.
+Techmoan but the wd40....
just kidding..love your channel !
+Sami Jansen They were just warning, not "hating". It's just that a million people did it. No need to "screw them", mate.
+Techmoan This isn't about Wd40, but about another sort of forgotten format! Have you ever considered getting a Edison Cylinder phonograph? Maybe getting one with a player/recording head? I would love to see you record on one of those(also would need an erasing machine that shaves used cylinders back into blanks for recording again). Maybe just a player review if can't get the recorder? Hope you consider one of those, and I think with that your collection will be that much more complete (with this late 1800's tech).
I'm fascinated by your channel. Love to see all the old and rare kind of formats. I remember DCC being promoted in the Netherlands but, as being a teenager, didn't have the money back then.
You actually inspired me setting up a room with these old kind of players/recorders and I'm trying to get a hold of a DCC player. It looks fantastic. I like the old players that have these complex mechanisms in them instead of just computer chips. :-)
+Robbert van Rijsewijk You should be able to find a machine over there quite easily. I'm with you on the complexity. I like my machines to work at making music. Streaming an audio file through a chip just doesn't do it for me.
just found your channel and loving it! What a trip down memory lane. My interest in the hobby began when I started work at RadioShack ( Tandy) in 1973. I've had a front row seat to the transition from analog to digital entertainment. Also, worked for UK tech company for 17 years. And just retired from my AudioVideo business started in 1997. Did you ever do a show on the failed attempt at Quadraphonic sound? What fun!
I am so glad I've come across this channel. So many old things, some from way before my time (I was born in 1988), I have never even heard of and you provide such an in-depth, informative look into them. Super interesting!
Brilliant video! Makes me think to keep my current tech items because eventually they will be relics.
Thank you for your time and energies re-visiting these audio formats of yester - year. I remember going into a pub in the Kings Cross area of London during the late 1970's and seeing the Sony Elcaset playing their lunchtime background music. The sound was really good. As for Philips DCC, the technology seemed to work a bit like the good old VHS video cassette, where the tape was pulled from the cassette body and furled/laced around the playback/recording head. When you needed to seek out part of a recording i.e. fast forward, the device would stop, return the tape into the cassette body at slow speed, then advance at high speed, stop, then pull the tape out, lace it around the 'head and play. A lot of time consuming mechanical activity for the listener to wait for just to access their music! On a visit to a Phonogram factory in Walthamstow, East London during the early 1980's, I saw part of their cassette production line. I was reliably informed that the paper labels for pre-recorded cassettes were stuck to the plastic shells using chloroform. Apparently a small shot of the liquid was sprayed on the shell which made the surface of the plastic tacky for a short time. The label was then applied and was firmly adhered to the cassette shell. All of this was done on a production line zooming along at a serious rate of knots! Maybe the same process was used for 8-track shells also. Keep up the good work sir.
Just found your channel last night. Can't stop watching your videos!
Your music shrine is so awesome... it's the perfect place to listen to music the way it was intended: sitting and relaxing, and actually paying attention to what you're listening; not on the run like most of us are "forced" to do nowadays.
WELCOME TO HOTEL CALIFORNIA
Thanks, what time is breakfast?
xD
She sho me da whey
Such a lovely place
@@Techmoan 9 am sharp
Just a Big thank you for all the the effort you put into researching and making your videos.
You do It with great knowledge and humour and l enjoy every one and some bring back great memories and disappointment of long gone formats.
Keep up the excellent work and you're one of my favourite channels by the ways 👍
I just love the rewind, fast forward, and especially, the pause buttons ef the elcaset player. Who knows, they maybe were an inspiration for emoticons we use nowadays!
For information (links and reviews) on some of the other items seen in this video - Click here: goo.gl/LchEls
Techmoan
6:04
MARILLION!!!
Entertaining and informative. Thanks for sharing. I remember both formats. As a young man, I was a regular visitor to my local electronics retailer, so I recall being given a test drive of the Elcaset. I also remember DCC because I was an early adapter of the minidisc which, as you explain, came out at the same time.
This video explains why streaming music, while cool, just feels different. After binge watching your channel for months I dug out my minidisc player and started my love affair with physical formats again. Thank you
I remember some stores like Radio Shack selling DCC cassettes and players.
i was impresssed when he took the legend album,,, much love
I've seen/owned a bunch of failed formats like DAT but hadn't seen these 2. Really great you collect and enjoy them all.
I was the buyer and manager of a company called Teletape who started out life selling prerecorded reel to reel tapes. Obviously selling tapes meant that we had to sell the tape players as well. I remember the EL5 & EL7 recoders and had one for awhile as it matched my Sony TA5650 & Sony ST5950SD tuner. I also had the Sony TC229 cassette deck to match the set.
I sold the sonny tape machines to pay for some work on my house but kept the amplifier and tuner. I still have a Technics RS1506 reel to reel recorder and Hi-Fidelity is still good fun.
I have invested in the Pono digital Flack player started by Neil Young as i have never been able to tolerate an Apple MP3 player the music sounds to compressed to me.
I enjoy all your videos and was impressed with the car cameras but by the time I got round to buying one I fond the model you found the best had vanished off the market. Perhaps it had been superseded by a cheaper model.
Excellent video, very interesting, thank you
COOL! I have a Sony EL-5, mint, but it has a bad take-up hub, so I never tried it. :-(
I had a thought of replacing the tape in an Elcaset with Maxell UDXL-180B. I bet that would go up to the stratosphere! Now I know it would be too thick and only record for maybe 15 minutes.
GREAT CHANNEL, and I’m glad that I discovered it.
Have a great weekend! :-)
I was born in 1989. So, growing up in the 90's, I would see some of the formats you post videos about in thrift stores/pawn shops, always fascinated about un-popular formats like these. I'm glad you do these videos, I love them!
As always, I find myself glued to your fantastic videos. I feel like I really ought to be paying for them!
The Play button etc looks like Smileys :)
Yes, especially the pause button :)
Entertaining video. These are two formats I have never seen before. Thanks
I have enjoyed just about everything you have done.From dash cam stuff to these recent posts. I now have mobius and #16. This type of kit is of my time. Still have reel to reel ,recent minidisc and DAT. Thanks again.
I do appreciate the hard work that you have put into making these videos. I'd love to visit your place which more or less like a museum for forgotten electronics.
If I would have been alive at that time, I definitely would have gone Elcaset.
Nowadays the only thing I can afford as a student are the good old compact cassettes. I do that on the one hand for confusing people seeing me in the train with a Sony WM-D6c and its red LEDs, on the other hand for keeping my vinyl record's analog goodness.
The cassettes are very comfortable as they are cheap and easy to get and if one has a good tape deck (with bias calibration and triple heads), he doesn't really need very high end tapes.
AlmightyMaria PvB there's a lot of people who couldn't afford or wouldn't want to pay for a D6C given their current prices, so you are very lucky to have one (as well as appreciate its abilities). I've been using a D6C to play my old tapes from the 90s and the sound when pairs with a good set of headphones is as good as I could want.
Techmoan
You are the first one I know on the Internet who uses this model as well.
I've got a few questions there:
Do you have the model with the amorphous head?
Did you have issues with head wear on your unit yet?
I'd really appreciate an answer as I am very concerned about the life of my tapeheads.
AlmightyMaria PvB I don't think I've any head wear, but the D6C is quite a repairable machine. I'm sure someone could put new heads in it if you needed this. My D6C is one of the earlier ones with the older circuit board design, not sure what head it will have in it.
I know, old comment, but you couldn't afford any kind of digital player but a WM-D6c was in your budget in 2015? That seems somewhat counterintuitive, lol
Great video! I love retro tech.
@Maximina Sciancalepore
1. Why did you care
2. It's probably illegal
@@yaboidustin2447 ?
So I got a Philips DCC player mainly due to this video... It's a low end Philips DCC 300 and apart from the drawer not always working a 100%, it's a very nice machine. And the sound quality really surprised me. Thanks for inspiring us and keeping old tech alive!
good on you for spending the time to demonstrate these formats. It's crazy to think how many have come and gone in just a few years, I'm 55 and you are making me feel ancient. ;)
The DCC was rather set as a competitor to Sony's (also failing) DAT. The big advantage of DCC was that it did not use a rotating head which DAT used (pretty much like in a video recorder). DCC used static heads, for many very thin tracks in parallel, so the heads looked like a sandwich with many layers. That also meant that Philips had to remove data (DAT recorded up to 48 kHz 16 bit PCM data uncompressed, hence the need of the rotating drum) to lower the bandwidth needed.
DAT has seen some revival in the data storage world as a cheap backup medium - also prone to many failures (due to the rotating head drum!), DCC died.
I remember that the music industry was scared shitless of DAT, for its lossless recording capability. They weren't as concerned about the lossy formats, and still, the whole mp3 thing almost killed the industry. They lacked a lot of foresight.
There was a secondary reason why they were afraid of DAT: It put an arguably CD-quality tape machine on the market at a "high consumer" price. Heck, it could produce tapes directly in CD audio format (44.1 ks/s, etc.). Furthermore it was possible to slave several such decks to a master clock, producing a multitrack CD-quality recorder. The music industry hated the notion that anyone outside their closely guarded gates would be able to master a release-quality track. Back in the early days of rock and roll, hundreds of tiny little labels sprang up to record the new music that the majors didn't want to touch. They were powered largely by relatively cheap, easy to use analog tape machines like the Ampex 600. (You saw one of these in _The Richie Valens Story_, in the home studio of the guy who wanted to record Richie but not the rest of his band.) After many of those little labels had success the majors spent huge amounts of money buying them up, re-consolidating the industry. They did not want to have to do that ever again. Of course, computer-based audio workstation hardware and software soon got cheap (and put the final nail in DAT's coffin, or tossed the last shovel of dirt on the grave, or whatever) and re-vitalized startup labels anyway... so these issues seem very quaint now... but that's the way it was.
+Pascal “Le Bakala” Gienger DAT came in 1987, DCC and MD in 1992. DCC and MD were clearly the competitors, both designed primarily for mobile use. DAT was designed for home use. DAT remained in marginal use in the professional market.
+Jamie Hanrahan The funny thing is that they fought so much against ways to improve the old style home recording from radio records etc. and as a result people just started copying and ripping CDs. DAT as a copying method was a joke compared to a PC with a CD burner. Content producers have never understood technology. If they had had their way, music would still be sold as sheet music. DAT, however, was dead as consumer device long before CD-R became popular.
Where did you find that audio spectrum analyzer at 14:50
Your videos like this are your best, as a hardcore laserdisc and minidisc fan I love these old format look backs.
Always enjoy your vintage audio videos. My latest toy is a Betacam video recorder. It looks awesome and has found a new home in my hifi rack as it records 4 channel audio as well as video. Like yourself my friends are facinated when they see vintage audio gear and are then amazed at how good it sounds.
4:44 Torille perkele. Greetings from finland. :)
+Tuho Norja mainittu?
+Sam M. Suomi korjattu tekstinä videolle.
+Tuho jahas.. Sinne taas
6:48
Waaait a minute . . . Techmoan listens to Black Sheep ?!! You go, dude !
I've only just come across your channel and I'm really enjoying your videos, particularly the retro hifi stuff. It's very interesting to find out about all these obscure formats that never took off, and how they compare to the formats we are used to. Especially interesting to me is the unusual bit depth of the DCC, 18 bits, how odd! And of course that would give slightly better quality than a CD at 16 bits. Anyway, hats off to you for these great videos, you've clearly put a lot of care and attention into them which is great to see. Cheers!
This is great stuff. Worked in the radio industry back in the early eighties, and I remember wanting to try all this stuff. It was a great time!
Woah the dcc is super cool! Too bad it never became popular.
Whats that glowing bars thingy at 14:25?
hakosukaftw somebody please answer this question, I would love to have that!
Yeah, what is that??
Figured it out: It’s called an “audio spectrum analyzer” you can find many different types of them on Amazon and eBay. This “Douk Audio” one in particular looks very similar to the one in the video (not sure if it’s the exact one though):
rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F272919011796
Dear Mr. Techmoan, I must say that I've enjoyed the thoroughness and context you bring to the vintage electronics you test out. This is truly a labor of love, I imagine, and I, for one, still own a Nakamichi 3-head casette deck that, using metal tapes, could reproduce CD recordings *almost* indistinguishably from the digital original. That said, you must spend a lot on acquiring these items that are no longer popular. I wonder what motivates you to pursue your hobby.
MOAR videos like this one, please. I love learning about old and unpopular things.
Lol, I once bought a blank DCC cassette by mistake. Ended up just playing with it by snapping that metal part like you would do with a 3 1/2" floppy.
hehe, just like snapping the plastic plate on a vhs tape or dat tape. always fun on a dark rainy night.
Dcc cassettes were working in a standard cassette deck after the modification you've done on the dcc cassette ??
The who- Who's next is probably my favorite record, where'd you get that picture record?
Makes sense that the Doctor's favorite record is by the Who 😄
@@nthgth i didn't even realize that 😅
Absolutely fantastic and interesting videos. I inherited a Marantz receiver from my father and I've been in love ever since with big solid metal knobs, levers and huge needle indicators.
Thanks for that really interesting video. I never heard about Elcaset before and i was born in 64, so I have seen and used quite a lot of different formats first hand including dcc and Minidisc. It was really a pleasure to watch. Thanks!
why dont you just use royalty free music?
ᏳᏫᏜᏡᎦᏈᏜᏫᏳ what character set are you useing for your name?
+KeithShizuo He's just fancy as fuck.
Remember that he says he will play music on these formats for people when they come over. I think he'd prefer to play them something they will enjoy.
+KeithShizuo i think that's cherokee
+KeithShizuo Because Pink Floyd and the Eagles are awesome
I see you've been playing with the intro!
Its looks better this way.
Your show is always an eye opener. Thank you very much!
I justed discovered you. I am 25 and remember lovely when I was 5 and used the HiFi of my mom and particularly the turntable. Thanks for this but most for all I discovered on your channel. The DTheater, the real quality of K7 etc.
I didn't understand the story about bad comment but I just want to say THANKS for all this hard work.
have you done a video on minidiscs?
+leslie burden Not yet...
I never quite managed to get into minidisks
+leslie burden Minidisks are great. Still use mine even now.
I see them as a cd in a protective case, like if the cassette and the cd had a child its a great idea
+Techmoan I know there is no gaming focus on this channel, but it would be nice if, whenever you make a MiniDisc video, you also explain its similarities with the later UMD format from the PSP...
I have the same Pioneer reciever
Over 30 years later and the Philips 900 Series hifi still looks stunning.
I worked in a A/V shop for 30 years and repaired many examples of the items you feature Except the Tififon. I really miss the old audio equipment with it's big switches and meters as well as it's fiddly nature. Keep the videos coming!
El cassete resembles very much the 1958 RCA tape cartridge.
Please, please do a video on the MiniDisc format!!
www.techmoan.com/blog/2016/7/18/minidisc.html
Sir, you come from my era of Audio/Video components. Great timeline showing. Love your videos. Wish I had some of that old Audio/Video equipment. Had an old Pioneer reverb unit for making stereo of sorts tapes from Mono content. Thanks again.
I remember seeing the EL Caste at a HiFi shop and marvelling at the audio quality, also saw the launch of the DCC at London and the clip on tomorrows world, which I may have in VHS in the loft. Don't forget the micro cassette, DAT recorder, Laserdisk, Video 2000,
What's the panel you use to display the music level that you show at the end and where to buy it ? :D
It's "Kayleigh", by Marillion.
magpieix no i am talking about the Lightning pane that displays music beats
That's weird--I replied to a different post, but youtube posted my reply here. Sorry about the confusion.
It's fine :)
Elcaset sounds just like Vinyl.... Would love to have the entire Beatles catalogue on Elcaset tho...
I've been really enjoying your videos! I too have a love for old tech of all kinds! Thanks for making these!
I have lotsa reel-to-reels, an eight track and even a wire recorder -- but I've never heard of Elcaset! Thanks for teaching me something new!