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Old 10-10-2008, 12:24
Bad Horsey
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For ages I've been planning to get around to transferring a whole bunch of cassettes to my PC (a mixture of old band rehearsals and demos, and ZX Spectrum games). But I didn't have a cassette deck and was at a loss to get a decent enough deck for a sensible price.

Step forward DCC. One eBay auction and £33 later (including postage) and I am now the proud owner of a Philips DCC900. As a digital recorder I can't yet comment on its facilities… but as a standard analogue playback deck, it's almost insanely over-engineered, with nice features such as a full complement of digital inputs and outputs, the latter of which chat very nicely to my soundcard and present a higher quality conversion than the card's own D/A converters.

This seems to be a format that is remembered with fondness and I have to admit to feeling pangs of love for it now myself...
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Old 10-10-2008, 13:21
Nigel Goodwin
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DCC was a complete disaster, you can't say it 'flopped', it never did enough to flop from.

It was perhaps a nice idea, but never sold, it was too little too late - with Philips trying to match their success with Compact Cassette. For those too young to remember, there were various different cassette formats over the years, with Philips eventually winning.
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Old 10-10-2008, 13:51
Matt Quinn
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DCC was a complete disaster, you can't say it 'flopped', it never did enough to flop from.

It was perhaps a nice idea, but never sold, it was too little too late - with Philips trying to match their success with Compact Cassette. For those too young to remember, there were various different cassette formats over the years, with Philips eventually winning.
And even when they had won there was still the Elcassette....

I used to have a Tascam 38 in my study.... One day one of my little girl's friends wandered in, pointed to it and asked "what's that?"....

"A tape recorder" I answered....

"ooooh" says she pausing for a moment, "what's a tape recorder?"
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Old 10-10-2008, 14:07
Bad Horsey
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And even when they had won there was still the Elcassette....
Oh god, the 1/4" format thing? Sony? Really excellent quality but a complete failure...
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Old 10-10-2008, 14:21
Matt Quinn
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Oh god, the 1/4" format thing? Sony? Really excellent quality but a complete failure...
I'd love one, if only for the comedy value...
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Old 10-10-2008, 15:36
Nigel Goodwin
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Oh god, the 1/4" format thing? Sony? Really excellent quality but a complete failure...
I've never actually seen one, but I've got the service manuals for them - nice idea, but bombed big style.
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Old 10-10-2008, 15:45
Matt Quinn
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I've never actually seen one, but I've got the service manuals for them - nice idea, but bombed big style.
I've only ever physically seen one. In Clydesdales in Argyll St Glasgow some time in about 1974 or 1975.... It looked HUGE! About twice the height of a cassette deck. IIRC it was in the same price range as the Sony 1/4" machines which, of course, were more of a known quantity.
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Old 10-10-2008, 16:06
Bad Horsey
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Since we're discussing obscure cassette formats...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL-2000
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Old 10-10-2008, 16:09
Matt Quinn
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Since we're discussing obscure cassette formats...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL-2000
They're quite sought after by collectors....

Somewhere at the back of a cupboard I have an EIAJ TIMELAPSE recorder! (not cassette I know but ) And I'm sure there must be a Umatic portable somewhere....
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Old 13-10-2008, 23:30
rob1973
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They're quite sought after by collectors....

Somewhere at the back of a cupboard I have an EIAJ TIMELAPSE recorder! (not cassette I know but ) And I'm sure there must be a Umatic portable somewhere....
Portable Umatic? Now there's a thought!
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Old 15-10-2008, 12:16
+3dB
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For ages I've been planning to get around to transferring a whole bunch of cassettes to my PC (a mixture of old band rehearsals and demos, and ZX Spectrum games).
I can forsee a problem here with the ZX Speccy games.

The audio on your cassettes represents data, and if you start compressing and processing it there's a very real danger it won't load properly.

My missus got a DVD full of Spectum games from eBay, along with an emulator to play them on her PC - could that be a solution?
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Old 15-10-2008, 13:18
Nigel Goodwin
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I can forsee a problem here with the ZX Speccy games.

The audio on your cassettes represents data, and if you start compressing and processing it there's a very real danger it won't load properly.
When did anyone mention compressing or processing anything?.
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Old 15-10-2008, 13:48
RobAnt
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A lot of bands and studios used DCC - some probably still do. They were great for recording straight from the mixing desk if you didn't want to do much post production tweaking. And good enough to be used as a CD master.

Wish I still had mine
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Old 15-10-2008, 14:23
+3dB
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When did anyone mention compressing or processing anything?.
The OP mentioned that he wants to transfer the audio of the Spectrum cassettes to his PC. I'm just cautioning against saving it anything other than a lossless format.
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