All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols.
All rights reserved. Permission for personal reference only, and may not
be reproduced by any method without written permission.
Washington DCC
by Roger Nichols
The controversy over DAT has been going on for years and shows no sign of
waning. Actually, it has been going on for so long that most of the record
companies can't remember why they didn't want DAT machines. One reason was
that they didn't want to have to stock yet another format in their inventories.
Another was that they were afraid that copies of CDs would be too good and
that illegal copying would put them out of business. So they decided to
try to legislate some form of copy protection into all DAT machines brought
into this country. Well, good work, guys. Before they did anything, you
couldn't copy a CD digitally to a DAT machine. After they made the rules
and added the copy protection you can copy as many CDs as you want.
So now what? DCC is what. (My English teacher would be proud of me.) When
Philips first announced this new format, the record companies started lining
up at the cashier. I thought that they didn't want any new formats to contend
with? The answer that we all got was that there wouldn't be any new format.
The new DCC was compatible with existing cassettes. The new tape would contain
both the analog and digital information. If you owned a regular cassette
player you would hear the analog information, but, if you had one of the
new DCC machines you could realize all of the enhanced quality offered by
the hidden digital audio encoded onto the same cassette. There was nothing
left to argue about. DAT was doomed. I had better place ads for my DAT machines
before anyone else heard the news.
Not so fast, DCC breath! A few months later, after all of the press and
ticker tape parades, I saw a little blurb that said that because of the
state of current technology, that DCC would not be able to contain both
the analog and digital data on the same tape. "But", P hilips
said, "DCC will still be partially compatible". Huh! Partially
compatible means that people that own the new DCC machines will be able
to play back normal analog cassettes on their new decks. However, the DCC
tapes would not play back on existing cassette equipment. Now, to me, this
means that the record stores are going to have to stock both formats, the
new DCC and the old cassette. Did I miss something? The record companies
were still going along with the whole thing. They are in support of the
new DCC format.
More news. It turns out that the amount of data that must be stored on tape
to equal the quality of a CD wouldn't fit on the new DCC tape. You could
only record about 20 minutes on a tape. In order to be able to record the
amount of time that was necessary, P hilips came up with a new data compression
scheme that would allow all of the musical information to be recorded with
only four bits of information required for each sample. Some people gasped
at the thought of such an accomplishment. Amazing! For years critics of
the CD have said that 16 bits at 44.1kHz is not really good enough to record
music faithfully, and golly darn, if P hilips hasn't figured out a way to
do it in only 1/4 the space. At first the claims were, "As good as
a CD". Then their expectations became, "Most people won't be able
to tell the difference".
P hilips' response to questions about their data compression method were
answered with, "We have come up with a method that removes low level
information that is being masked by louder audio data". "This
information is basically un-necessary for normal music listening".
"Most people will not hear any difference". They played it for
the record company executives. Not one person heard any difference. That
tells me something, but not about the quality of DCC.
Remember, these were the same guys that wanted to notch out part of the
music on CDs so that new cassette recorders with notch detectors could not
copy them. They said the notch filters didn't touch the music and nobody
could hear the difference. Recording artists yelled at the record companies
and The National Bureau of Standards said that it altered the music so much
that "Anybody could hear the difference". The record companies
gave up.
As far as DCC quality goes, it turns out that when the audio information
is decoded, it doesn't return entirely to it's original state, there are
some artifacts remaining from the compression process. If you make a copy
of a DCC tape in the analog domain to another DCC machine, these artifacts
contribute to the deterioration of the music quality. Basically, one generation
is almost un-listenable.
Well, now I understand what is going on. The record companies are endorsing
a format that is only marginally better than an analog cassette, will benefit
from the "Digital" high-tech buzz-word and when copied to another
machine, will sound like so much dog meat. Everything that they hate DAT
for.
I have changed my mind. I am not going to rush out and sell my DAT machines
just yet. Maybe I should check the ads for low mileage used DAT machines
that the record company execs will be dumping when they get their DCC machines.
I wonder if 8-track tapes will come back. Maybe I should dig out my old
wire recorder. With a 12 volt inventor and a cassette adapter for my car
radio...... a Fisher Space Expander. Yeah, that's the ticket.
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