Digital Compact Cassette

The Digital Compact Cassette is a technology developed by Philips and Matsushita and 1992 presented an alternative to traditional analog Compact Cassette, which is also a Philips invention.

The Digital Compact Cassette was initially referred because of the similarity with the professional DAT recording system internally as S- DAT ( Digital Audio Tape Static -heads ). DCC players were able to play the traditional analog Compact Cassette; a recording, however, only on DCC tapes was possible.

Compared with the conventional analog Compact Cassette provides the DCC due to the following technical details a much better sound quality:

• Frequency range 48 kHz - DCC receptacles 20 Hz to 22 kHz, - a comparison of the analog CC 20 Hz to 18 kHz
• Signal to noise ratio of a DCC > 92 dB - compared the analog CC > 50 dB ( the band type chromium dioxide )

As MP3 or MiniDisc also used this medium data reduction. For this purpose, we used a system called " PASC " (Precision Adaptive Subband Coding ) that the piece of music compressed to about 1:4. PASC is almost identical to the MPEG-1 audio Layer 1, and operates at a data rate of 384 kbit / s

In contrast to the direct competitor, the Mini Disc, this system had no initial problems with the sound quality. However, the further proliferation were deficiencies regarding the operation in the way. The finding of a song in the middle of a 90 - minute cassette tape could take ever more than a minute. With the minidisc -to-find features ( in seconds Erasing a track, any move, and especially the rapid activation of titles ), this medium could not offer systemic. However, the system also offered the opportunity to enter title and artist; in some finished recorded tapes even song lyrics were displayed. Despite lower handset prices and significant progress in the operation ( " Turbo Drive " drive, 90 -min cassette in a minute rewound ), the DCC could not prevail.

Revolutionary was the combination of the Portable DCC recorder 175 with a standard Windows PC. So you could already play over 1995 pieces directly from the audio recorder on the computer's hard disk, edit, archive or use the audio recorder directly from your PC via software.

There was also DCC Streamer to use DCC for data backup. This disappeared along with the DCC from the market.

Mid-1990s, they wanted to establish because of the outstanding sound characteristics of this system (18 -bit resolution) in the studio production, but this failed. Ultimately, development and production in 1996 have been set.

Regarding the long-term stability, the DCC has systemic struggling with similar defects, which are known from analog cassette: The tape is subject to continuous wear and progressive decomposition, resulting in spite of digital error correction in the extreme case that after many years of show whole passages of pre-recorded DCC dropouts or bands can no longer be played. The band wear sets itself as pollution from the tape heads.