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Topic: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech? (Read 3692 times) previous topic - next topic
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1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

1982 BBC classic video about the future.   :))


https://youtu.be/EPD1IKC3myA
EZ CD Audio Converter / FLAC or WavPack

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #1 –
Won't get on sale for at least another three years. Where "at least" means "at least, but let's tease it with some excessive optimism"?

Seems they were prototyping what came to be DCC. I wonder, what codec could they using in 1982?
(LPCM because that makes sense for a prototype that would only demo half a minute at the time?)

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Seems they were prototyping what came to be DCC. I wonder, what codec could they using in 1982?
(LPCM because that makes sense for a prototype that would only demo half a minute at the time?)
They used MPEG 1 Audio Layer I at a bitrate of 384 kbit/s for the DCC.
I never heard it, so I don't know how the quality compares to Layer II

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Seems they were prototyping what came to be DCC.
Since the video describes passingly about PCM and doesn't mention anything about data compression, that was probably a prototype of Digital Audio Tape.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #4 –
I like the way they built that "tape head simulator" with plastic sheet for the illustration. Nowadays almost everything is illustrated in CGI and pretty boring.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #5 –
It might have been a "DAT prototype", it uses the same tape but less of it. The cassette plastic isn't really key to the technology ...

@Sunhillow : This prototype was way before the development of MP1/2/3 had even started.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #6 –
It could be ADPCM if not LPCM or PASC. The problem is that the audio excerpt is too short and in most time overlapped with the woman's voice. Also, with the lossy nature of Youtube audio it is impossible to judge the quality in any meaningful way.

DAT recorders typically use rotating head instead of stationary head and it would be quite laborious to build such a simulator for the TV program.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #7 –
On second thought, this prototype apparently shares the same form factor with Compact Cassette unlike "the" Digital Audio Tape and uses 8 tracks to store stereo audio...

I should have written "a digital audio tape" instead of "Digital Audio Tape" in my previous post. A lot can happen in five to ten years.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #8 –
Watched the one about CDs. Made me wonder what the next big physical format will be but it's just going to be SSD's all the way down with maybe an iteration of blu-ray in 5 years allowing PS6 games to be 150-200GB+. 4TB M.2 is affordable and 8TB M.2 will be affordable in a few years but that's all that's likely to happen. How exciting  ::)

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Porcus on
@Sunhillow : This prototype was way before the development of MP1/2/3 had even started.
OMG of course you are right! MASCAM, the predecessor of MP1/2, was presented to AES in 1988.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #12 –
That video 'bennetng' posted about DAT says at one point in the video, "A CD recorded to DAT would sound as good as a CD. you know what a CD sounds like and if you had a 48KHz pre-recorded DAT it would sound a little bit better than the CD".

I am pretty sure that's not true given you can't really improve a CD since it already exceeds human hearing. so no matter how much "better" audio might be in the future over a standard CD, it's not going to matter in the real world when it comes to your typical stereo music.

p.s. thanks for the video as it's kind of cool looking at these old audio tech videos.
For music I suggest (using Foobar2000)... MP3 (LAME) @ V5 (130kbps). NOTE: using on AGPTEK-U3 as of Mar 18th 2021. I use 'fatsort' (on Linux) so MP3's are listed in proper order on AGPTEK-U3.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #13 –
Well, the point that I posted Techmoan's video in the context of this thread is about whether the BBC prototype is DAT or DCC. In terms of form factor and read/write mechanism BBC's video looks like DCC, but as mentioned by others, DCC uses lossy compression. How much time it took to get the specs of a real DAT? I pointed to the specific part in the video, it was 1986. So the prediction of the BBC program was not too far from the reality, just the legal stuff crippled the whole thing.

Honestly, when Techmoan showed his dead DAT walkmans, I was glad that I had chosen MiniDisc instead of DAT as my first portable digital recorder.

It was a Sony MZ-R3, that thing was not very robust too. The recording part failed after 8 months and killed two of my recorded MDs' TOC. Got the walkman repaired for free within warranty period and it worked flawlessly until 2019 or so. The R/W mechanism still works, but the LCD becomes completely black now.

I've used one of the Sony ES DAT deck in a studio and another Sony DAT (PCM-7030) in another studio, but I've never used a DAT walkman.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #14 –
Quote from: bennetng on
Well, the point that I posted Techmoan's video in the context of this thread is about whether the BBC prototype is DAT or DCC. In terms of form factor and read/write mechanism BBC's video looks like DCC, but as mentioned by others, DCC uses lossy compression. How much time it took to get the specs of a real DAT? I pointed to the specific part in the video, it was 1986. So the prediction of the BBC program was not too far from the reality, just the legal stuff crippled the whole thing.

Honestly, when Techmoan showed his dead DAT walkmans, I was glad that I had chosen MiniDisc instead of DAT as my first portable digital recorder.

It was a Sony MZ-R3, that thing was not very robust too. The recording part failed after 8 months and killed two of my recorded MDs' TOC. Got the walkman repaired for free within warranty period and it worked flawlessly until 2019 or so. The R/W mechanism still works, but the LCD becomes completely black now.

I've used one of the Sony ES DAT deck in a studio and another Sony DAT (PCM-7030) in another studio, but I've never used a DAT walkman.

I've never used Minidisc. Didn't it use lossy compression? How was the anti-skip protection on Minidisc?

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #15 –
MiniDisc uses lossy compression (ATRAC) at about 1/5 of CDDA bitrate. Only the very last generation (Hi-MD) offers lossless CDDA quality, but it was too late already, the competition was completely lost.

The MZ-R3 has 10 seconds of shock protection during recording and playback. Here are some tests I did:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/zoom-f6-portable-field-recorder-review.15668/post-504924
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/zoom-f6-portable-field-recorder-review.15668/post-505239

These tests cannot reveal the ATRAC compression artifacts because they were done in a record standby mode, it took data from the mini toslink input and redirect the signal to analog line-out without compression.

There was also a newer ATRAC3 format with higher lossy compression ratio, but the old MZ-R3 doesn't support it.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Sunhillow on
Quote from: Porcus on
Seems they were prototyping what came to be DCC. I wonder, what codec could they using in 1982?
(LPCM because that makes sense for a prototype that would only demo half a minute at the time?)
They used MPEG 1 Audio Layer I at a bitrate of 384 kbit/s for the DCC.
I never heard it, so I don't know how the quality compares to Layer II
I did hear one. I think it was either a Philips or a Marantz model. I worked in a high-end hifi store and was given it to try. I remember it actually sound very good. Certainly the best sound that I had ever heard from a cassette and I had heard and sold a lot of audiophile cassette decks. We sold the top model Nakamichi decks and this DCC certainly sounded as good if not better and I could not hear compression artifacts such as as ringing and pre-echo so I remember being quite impressed. I was pretty sure that the format would not take off though because people were pretty happy with CDs and analogue cassette decks at the time. I also remember the Philips sales rep being pissed off at me when he handed me a brochure which read "The First 100 DCCs". I crossed out "First" and wrote "Last" :)

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #17 –
Quote from: rectangle on
I was pretty sure that the format would not take off though because people were pretty happy with CDs and analogue cassette decks at the time.
And there was a format war. Not saying that MiniDisc won it, but DCC ended up last.

Re: 1982: Is This CASSETTE The FUTURE of Hi-Fi Tech?

Reply #18 –
I like the physical element of CDs.
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