[oberton]

this one seems to be rare ,I did not see it before.
perhaps someone of you has experience with it or read a rewiew...
good morning!
oberton


http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...category=10627

 

[Trawlerman]

That's a DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) machine and not a standard Cassette Deck.

They were introduced in the early 90s as a competitor to Minidisc. They could play normal cassettes but recorded on a special digital media.

They had 1:5 compression ratio and used the PASC encoding system. PASC is similar to ATRAC & MP3 and many people readily acknowledge that it was a better format.

It never really took off due the the high costs of the media.

They are a usefull thing to have though. If you want to transfer a cassette to CD or other digital format you don't have to mess around too much with interfacing. It automatically outputs the signal from the cassette on it S/PDIF outputs which you can connect to an external recorder or DAC.

FWIW these machines were built like tanks are quite collectible. Blank media may be problem though.

 

[oberton]

thanks for replying trawlerman -very informative.
good morning,
oberton

 

[crispy98007]

I have one of these essentially unused, had a tape in it for maybe 5 minutes. Used mainly for it's excellent metering of input levels. Also have about 15 blank TDK DCC tapes. Anyone interested email me, I'm cleaning house. Chris

chrisdove@charter.net

 

[majid]

Philips' DCC was optimized for in-car use. In the end, neither it nor its main rival Sony's MD made it to the big leagues, just as with the SACD vs. DVD-A format war. Consumer electronics firms never learn.

 

[Bostonears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by majid /img/forum/go_quote.gif Philips' DCC was optimized for in-car use. In the end, neither it nor its main rival Sony's MD made it to the big leagues, just as with the SACD vs. DVD-A format war. Consumer electronics firms never learn.

Actually, MiniDisc (MD) was quite popular in Japan in the 1990s, although it never gained traction anywhere else.