It's also helping to spread the word about the format too, which I think might still be relevant in today's day and age as a high quality compact medium. :-) Going to check out the DCC Museum shortly (And apologies in advance if I suck up lots of bandwidth reading up on the technical specs! :-)
+D Dragon Oh, damned spanners in the works. Whatever the JS on the site does, it kills Safari and sends iPhone battery consumption through the roof! :'-( ScriptFree design: Makes just as much sense as the U.S. Mint! Strongly recommended! :-)
These American Airlines tapes were extremely popular in the mid 60's. I was fortunate to live in an area where one could find prerecorded reels quite easily. On the west coast we had a big box store chain called White Front, that had a pre-recorded reel section bigger than most record stores. These were available in quantity along with current releases. Prerecorded stereo reels were about 3 times the cost of an LP at the time. My copy of Revolver i bought in November of 1967 was 7.95, compared to 2.95 for the stereo LP. These American Airline tapes also found their way to PX's in Vietnam, and a lot of GI's either had these or direct copies of them. I have one of those in my archive. But prior to this, Voice of Music made a series of long playing tapes (3 hours, just like these) but of unified genres and of interest to the older generation (lots of easy listening, big bands and orchestral versions of modern hits). i have a couple of these as well. They also sold these American Airlines tapes at the airports themselves. As i recall, these sold at retail for around 19.95 in the mid 60's.
The Anti-DCC movement still has a loyal following. They see this as the resurgence of an ancient evil that must be quashed with a holy vengeance of downward pointing thumbs of furious disapproval.
@Techmoan: PMDC Amersfoort was actually the factory of Polygram (a Dutch record label) for the production of DCC. I actually found a newspaper article from Juli-16-1991 where it says that Polygram had bought two Philips CD production plants in Hannover and Louviers for f200 million Gulden. At the bottom of that article it mentions that they were also building a factory in Amersfoort for the all new DCC format that was due to release next year (so in 1992). So that's indeed a Christmas DCC for everyone from the Polygram DCC factory. :) Polygram (A joint between a part of Philips and Siemens) was probably one of the biggest record labels in the world, especially since they could buy Motown Records in 1993 for just a mere sum of $301 million US Dollars. In 1998 Philips sold the company and since 2011 it has been in the hands of the Universal Music Group. Personally my guess (as in speculation) is that Polygram invested a bit too much in DCC and with its failure came its downfall. Also less and less of other formats were being sold as well, since burning CD's was becoming a hot thing. So yeah... one thing leads to the other in these cases.
That teensy-tiny Sony NT cassette pleases the same part of my brain that also likes "tiny house" Pinterest boards, civil war dioramas and dollhouse miniatures.
I really enjoy your videos! Especially these ones on obscure formats! I'm a musician and the oddest thing I've released on is a 5.25" floppy disk. I'm fascinated by obscure formats and your videos open my mind for more ideas of obscure formats to put my audio on. Thank-you!
Dare I suggest an audio release on EDCBIC cards?... ;-) (Might have to be low quality audio, mind. Gods forbid what 640MB of CDDA looks like as Hollerith cards! :-o :-p )
You've knocked it out of the park again! There's a Goodwill that gets interesting electronics near me every once in a while, and because of you I have an idea what it is. If I see something I'm not familiar with I'm encouraged to look it up and see what it is! Thanks for the videos!
I was pretty impressed when he mentioned you. I'm the fellow who thought he was selling a working one, but the device ended up breaking down. Did you get any use out of it yet, for parts or repairs?
OMG! You can't imagine how much I love DCC's! I was 17 or 18 years old when a friend of mine wanted to buy a stereo system. We went to the shop and saw that the Philips DCC FW91 was on sale! At that time it was priced u$s 1700 which was a lot of money. But this time was on sale for u$s 900! We went mad! This was the year 1996. We were only grown kids and from a little town in Argentina. We didn't know that formats can succeed or get doomed! If it was there on the shop, it was a matter of time for people to start buying DCC equipment to finally become a popular thing! This system was an incredible well put together machine. It was made in Austria and had a lot of features. But of course, the most important one was the DCC player/recorder. We struggle to find any retailers that sell DCCs. Pre recorded ones on music shops let alone blank ones of any kind. I really can't remember where do we finally could manage to get our hands on a couple of blank ones. I think we got a couple of 45 min as well as 60 min tapes. After a couple of years, my friend, who wasn't certainly not that exited as me about the system (he was happy to get a top of the range audio system, but not too kin because it had a DCC player), he decided get get rid of it. My brother decided to bought it from him and since then (I belive we are talking about the year 2009) he is the happy owner of this machine. He isn't THAT excited to have that particular system because of the DCC but for the fact that was something from our youth years. The thing here is that it isn't working anymore. Except for the sound, everything else does. We have no idea what it is going on with and as you may imagine NOBODY knows anything about how to fix this machine. Most technicians just laugh at us saying things like: why would you buy such a rare system that it won't have support after you buy it! It is so frustraiting! I guess I'll try to contact the people you suggested in the video description to see if there's anything they can help us with. Thanks for making this video Mat! It really make my day!
Having 3 breaks in 9 years is great for a washing machine. Nowadays they usually last 4 years and then they break to the point fixing them will cost more than buying a new one
I owned no less than three different DCC players back in the day. Two different versions for my stereo and that portable version shown at 11:40. I loved that format, so it really bummed me out that it failed so completely.
Great video as always. The American Airlines tape was particularly interesting. I love things like that... tapes or records from back in the day that were used on planes or in radio stations or malls etc. It's a bit of a snapshot of history in a way. Getting back to American Airlines, that Astrovision must have seem like a revelation at the time. We take TV's for granted now on planes, along with having dozens of movies and TV shows to choose from, dozens of music channels, and games to play while we are cramped uncomfortably into seats most lapdogs wouldn't put up with. But at the time having a TV on a plane must have seemed out of this world.
I was really impressed that the Reel to Reel actually played. Many older tapes tend to peel apart and shell out. Recording studios spend a lot of time and money with special ovens to warm them up and make them playable again, if only long enough to transfer them to digital.
I have some pretty good memories of making and eating the Chef Boyardee pizza kits as a kid. It always makes me smile to see them on supermarket shelves. In terms of pizza you can make it home, it's some of the best out there.
Making the dough is pretty easy even without a pre-mix. All it takes is flour, water, some yeast and a little salt. For making an entire baking tray's worth, use 500g of flour, one small pack of dry baking yeast and a teaspoon of salt. Stir little water into the flour until the clumps turn into the typical stringy dough. Let sit for 10-15 minutes and spread onto the baking tray (should have some flour and/pr oil on it to prevent the dough from sticking). Done.
Great find and such a cool production. I used to have a few Reel to Reels from American Arline's (or the publicly sold copies) that I acquired in the 1980's when I bought a reel to reel to master my 4 track cassette up to. I absolutely the tapes and the quality was remarkably good. I got to where I really loved watching the wheels move while listening to music that I'd put tapes in even when listening to some other medium. It was just that fun to have going on. I do believe the songs were picked specifically for travel, excitement, feeling important or adventurous. all the songs I had were great even if they were just to pass the time until the next track, nothing really felt much like a downer that I can remember.
If I came round your house for a coffee, you'd have to escort me to the front door after 5 hours. 'Whats that switch over there for, what's that switch over there for'
Yes it's one of my favourite formats I've featured in a video. I'm so glad I could showcase it again here, because I'm sure there are quite a few people who've never seen it. You also have to consider that it's hard to judge scale when something is shown in close-up...you'd probably be even more amazed if you saw one in person.
Some say its a bit Hipster to release new titles on old formats, but doesn't matter to me because I like the warm nostalgia feeling that combining new and old brings.
What an amazing idea to make a brand new release for the DCC and MiniDisc! I hope this project pays of well. I sincerely wish those two formats (and DAT) would get back into production.
D'awww Techmoan.... Helping the DCC Museum catalog all the produced tapes out there. It's one thing to collect tapes for yourself, and its another to collect it for all of history.
Awesome video as always, did wonder what was in the case behind you, didn't think it would just be cassettes knowing you. Nice shirt by the way! Your content is some of the best out there in UA-cam.
That NT tape output was outrageously better than I anticipated! It's a shame it wasn't out a few years beforehand! I also didnt realise that i'd missed the DCC and NT video, oh the shame. Great Vid Mat! Something out of the ordinary :) Thanks!
You're probably only one of a handful of UA-camrs I've watched whose production quality is so immaculate you'd easily get a deal with Netflix if only you'd ask. BUT. I wouldn't want to lose you to Netflix.
I can remember all formats but when I was a kid in the early 80's reel-to-reels were an extreme novelty in some quarters and everyone was getting excited over CD and were witnessing all of the CD's smeared in food & mud, scratched a little, cleaned and then played. I remember the later formats in DAT, NT, MD and DCC and the minor format war broke out in the professional and consumer world and not one of them really survived but DAT appeared to be the winner due to it's adoption by recording studios for cheap and effective mastering purposes for making copies as well as backing up digital data. All interesting stuff to look over!
I swear to God, one of these days I will start saving for all those different old formats and I will get myself an HiFi as tall as my room will accommodate
Love this channel. When I get a chance, and put together my man cave I'll definitely be getting some of these old formats and collections for shiggles and ghits!
It's amazing how times have changed with regards to in flight entertainment and flying in general. Hard to remember what it must have been like before affordable portable music in the 70s/80s. Being able to listen to music would have been a marvel!
@Thechmoan. PMDC Amesfoort (Netherlands) was a part of Polygram that solely dealt with audio and video cassettes. It was sold to the Canadian Cinram in June '97.
Everytime I tune into a Techmoan video an advertisement for the Jabra Elite wireless headphones starts. I’m tuning into a guy that understands tech, moreover, sound systems better than most. The algorithm still isn’t perfect.
My favorite song!...Techmoan I love your taste in classic hip hop! I've noticed you even have tapes from the rapper Paris. This was a very informative video! Thank you!
Thanks to your channel and your brilliant vids, people like me who have neither the money and/or space for these pieces of history still get to see them and enjoy them. Thanks muchly 👍
I am completely stunned to hear that there is actually a new album release on DCC - the first one in twenty-one years! Pretty incredible. By the way: DCC has, in a way, lived on in digital broadcasting all these years until today. DCC compression system known as 'PASC' is essentially Musicam or MP2. And yes, that is indeed the pre-decessor to mp3. Interestingly, MP2 is still widely in use today digital broadcasting. I don't know about the U.S., but in Europe and the DVB-S system we use, all digital radiochannels still broadcast in mp2 because it's fairly efficiënt and is apparently a bit more robust in broadcasting services than mp3 is. Can you believe it, a digital broadcasting technology that has remained unchanged for 25 years with no real sign of it's nearing end? If you listen to FM or DAB+ radio, there's a good change is fed with a high bitrate MP2 signal as well. The British DAB system (without the '+') still uses MP2 but unfortunately at a low bitrate. But listen to the German public satellite radiostations: that's MP2 at max bitrate and therefore very much the radioversion of DCC - still going strong after more than 20 years.
There was a moment there circa 1993 when cassettes were locked in a fierce competition with CD's because they cost half as much but sounded half as good. Digital cassettes were supposed to solve that problem. DAT and DCC were the major digital tape formats from the era. DAT found a home in studio production and server backup; DCC never had such luck. A shame, really, as it was a better format, since a DCC machine could play regular analog cassettes as well. It's all moot now, of course, since we have services such as Spotify and the concept of "the album" is all but dead.
The DCC cassettes also suffered the same problem as regular cassettes in the form of tape degradation and possible mechanical failure inside the cassette.
Oh, of course, they're still tape... but as with any digital source, if you have any signal at all, you have a complete signal, as opposed to an analog source, where signal quality degrades by some approximation of an inverse square. The selling point about "WOW DIGITAL" in 1993 was a valid one vs traditional analog cassettes. Obviously the same digital information stored on a modern device with no moving parts is going to be a more stable storage medium.
Note that (from Wikipedia), the system used "12 bit nonlinear quantization, corresponding to 17 bit linear quantization", so it presumably sounded a fair bit better than normal 12-bit
Techmoan you should do interviews to experts or people involved in this and all retro tech, it would be cool to have guests besides the puppets. Keep the great work.
On the inside of the DCC case it features the word "Amersfoort". This is a city in the netherlands. Polygram had a daughter company called PMDC in that city. Polygram was a Dutch/German entertainment company. Eventualy Polygram became part of universal music.
Oh my, yes, Astro Vision. Something I completely forgot. Ahhh wasn't it PIA tho that first started doing this on international flights or something. Ahh, old aviation.
Another brilliant video , I bought a DCC recorder in the 90:s to record my own band music but it kept going wrong so got a refund, bought a minidisc and that worked a treat still have it , but would still get a DCC player now for my retro HiFi stack .
Ya know I have to say . I really love this channel . . he has an amazing voice and honestly it makes me wish i had a bigger place and more liquid bank account to collect these amazing format of items . i esp love the fact thsi guy digs Gunship as i have seen the Gunship cassette used
I had completely forgotten about DCC....so I really enjoyed the nostalgia of this video! I know the quality mostly depends on the playback DA conversion, but I'd love to hear an audio comparison between CD, MD, DAT, DCC & WAV, etc.
That pre-recorded NT Cassette music album was by far my favourite one. I would love to own an NT Cassette player (one that doesn't beep when you change the track) and play tiny NT Cassette albums on it, perhaps with some more album artwork on the cassette cartridge itself.
Yes! American Airlines did put out a series of compilation albums on reel-to-reel featuring selections from the Astrovision system where it features nothing but easy listening, background music like the one you hear in a department store or a supermarket, but it was hear on a plane. The Astrovision Music Program series was the reel-to-reel tape where you can get at any American Airlines flights where you can get a free album to hear 3 hours of easy listening background music on one reel.
good to see something with the Dave Grusin name on it.One of my favorite all time musicians and doyan of many audiophile releases especially on his no moved on from GRP label.Good video.
That Chrysler Newport ad you showed really summarizes 1960's American car buying, "Who cares about logic?". I mean don't get me wrong, I'm American, and I love classic American cars, but that ad really does it haha. That '66 Olds Ninety-Eight in a two door configuration would easily be my dream car.
I don't own either a DCC (would probably be cool to though!) or a MiniDisc player, but that Wicked Blue album seemed interesting being that it was being released on so many different formats, so I had to preorder a vinyl copy of it.
Thank you so much for all your hard work and for making these videos for us :) I purged most of my obscure electronics over the years, but still have all my tapes, records, and cds. I do however have a set of late 1960s altec voice of the theater speakers that unlike all the others i've ever seen (most were plain black, meant for theater use) Mine are very pretty with wood lattice grills. 25w 16ohm! ;)
Thank you for keeping the format alive. This video means a lot to the DCC Community and Museum.
DCC museum?
It's also helping to spread the word about the format too, which I think might still be relevant in today's day and age as a high quality compact medium. :-)
Going to check out the DCC Museum shortly (And apologies in advance if I suck up lots of bandwidth reading up on the technical specs! :-)
+D Dragon Oh, damned spanners in the works. Whatever the JS on the site does, it kills Safari and sends iPhone battery consumption through the roof! :'-(
ScriptFree design: Makes just as much sense as the U.S. Mint! Strongly recommended! :-)
I have a recordable DCC. No machine though.
DCC looks great I might see if I can get my hands on one to try
The audio quality of the micro cassette Sony NT seems to be great..
These American Airlines tapes were extremely popular in the mid 60's. I was fortunate to live in an area where one could find prerecorded reels quite easily. On the west coast we had a big box store chain called White Front, that had a pre-recorded reel section bigger than most record stores. These were available in quantity along with current releases. Prerecorded stereo reels were about 3 times the cost of an LP at the time. My copy of Revolver i bought in November of 1967 was 7.95, compared to 2.95 for the stereo LP. These American Airline tapes also found their way to PX's in Vietnam, and a lot of GI's either had these or direct copies of them. I have one of those in my archive. But prior to this, Voice of Music made a series of long playing tapes (3 hours, just like these) but of unified genres and of interest to the older generation (lots of easy listening, big bands and orchestral versions of modern hits). i have a couple of these as well. They also sold these American Airlines tapes at the airports themselves. As i recall, these sold at retail for around 19.95 in the mid 60's.
Techmoan never ending supply of videos that shows how Sony made all the amazingist shit.
Sony's history is also a case study in how often you can afford to fail if your successes are big enough.
I really don't understand why anyone would give an entirely innocent, and informative, video like this a thumbs down.
Maybe thought it was boring, which makes me wonder why they came here in the first place.
The Anti-DCC movement still has a loyal following. They see this as the resurgence of an ancient evil that must be quashed with a holy vengeance of downward pointing thumbs of furious disapproval.
Jealousy may be a driver? I don’t get it!
Some men just want to watch the world burn, Mr. Wayne.
Probably people who invested heavily in NTC and DCC Tapes
@Techmoan: PMDC Amersfoort was actually the factory of Polygram (a Dutch record label) for the production of DCC. I actually found a newspaper article from Juli-16-1991 where it says that Polygram had bought two Philips CD production plants in Hannover and Louviers for f200 million Gulden. At the bottom of that article it mentions that they were also building a factory in Amersfoort for the all new DCC format that was due to release next year (so in 1992).
So that's indeed a Christmas DCC for everyone from the Polygram DCC factory. :)
Polygram (A joint between a part of Philips and Siemens) was probably one of the biggest record labels in the world, especially since they could buy Motown Records in 1993 for just a mere sum of $301 million US Dollars. In 1998 Philips sold the company and since 2011 it has been in the hands of the Universal Music Group.
Personally my guess (as in speculation) is that Polygram invested a bit too much in DCC and with its failure came its downfall. Also less and less of other formats were being sold as well, since burning CD's was becoming a hot thing. So yeah... one thing leads to the other in these cases.
That teensy-tiny Sony NT cassette pleases the same part of my brain that also likes "tiny house" Pinterest boards, civil war dioramas and dollhouse miniatures.
I really enjoy your videos! Especially these ones on obscure formats! I'm a musician and the oddest thing I've released on is a 5.25" floppy disk. I'm fascinated by obscure formats and your videos open my mind for more ideas of obscure formats to put my audio on. Thank-you!
Dare I suggest an audio release on EDCBIC cards?... ;-)
(Might have to be low quality audio, mind. Gods forbid what 640MB of CDDA looks like as Hollerith cards! :-o :-p )
You've knocked it out of the park again! There's a Goodwill that gets interesting electronics near me every once in a while, and because of you I have an idea what it is. If I see something I'm not familiar with I'm encouraged to look it up and see what it is! Thanks for the videos!
I used to have a portable DCC player, sold it to Ralph earlier this year! Good to see he got in touch with you about the project. Great stuff.
strandtentje Thanks again.
I was pretty impressed when he mentioned you. I'm the fellow who thought he was selling a working one, but the device ended up breaking down. Did you get any use out of it yet, for parts or repairs?
OMG! You can't imagine how much I love DCC's! I was 17 or 18 years old when a friend of mine wanted to buy a stereo system. We went to the shop and saw that the Philips DCC FW91 was on sale! At that time it was priced u$s 1700 which was a lot of money. But this time was on sale for u$s 900! We went mad! This was the year 1996. We were only grown kids and from a little town in Argentina. We didn't know that formats can succeed or get doomed! If it was there on the shop, it was a matter of time for people to start buying DCC equipment to finally become a popular thing!
This system was an incredible well put together machine. It was made in Austria and had a lot of features. But of course, the most important one was the DCC player/recorder. We struggle to find any retailers that sell DCCs. Pre recorded ones on music shops let alone blank ones of any kind. I really can't remember where do we finally could manage to get our hands on a couple of blank ones. I think we got a couple of 45 min as well as 60 min tapes.
After a couple of years, my friend, who wasn't certainly not that exited as me about the system (he was happy to get a top of the range audio system, but not too kin because it had a DCC player), he decided get get rid of it. My brother decided to bought it from him and since then (I belive we are talking about the year 2009) he is the happy owner of this machine. He isn't THAT excited to have that particular system because of the DCC but for the fact that was something from our youth years.
The thing here is that it isn't working anymore. Except for the sound, everything else does. We have no idea what it is going on with and as you may imagine NOBODY knows anything about how to fix this machine. Most technicians just laugh at us saying things like: why would you buy such a rare system that it won't have support after you buy it!
It is so frustraiting! I guess I'll try to contact the people you suggested in the video description to see if there's anything they can help us with.
Thanks for making this video Mat! It really make my day!
Oh my god, you could've just said you like them
Ralf at the dcc museum can fix most issues with the dcc decks, he really s amazing. I hope you were able to find help getting your unit repaired.
Where were you in Argentina? I'm from Alta gracia, Córdoba
At this point, I think "Tapemoan" might be a more appropriate channel name.
(Still love the videos though)
Having 3 breaks in 9 years is great for a washing machine. Nowadays they usually last 4 years and then they break to the point fixing them will cost more than buying a new one
I owned no less than three different DCC players back in the day. Two different versions for my stereo and that portable version shown at 11:40. I loved that format, so it really bummed me out that it failed so completely.
I had a very vivid nightmare that you had a stopped making videos about music formats and equipment. And now I see this. Yes! Don't stop bro.
Great video as always. The American Airlines tape was particularly interesting. I love things like that... tapes or records from back in the day that were used on planes or in radio stations or malls etc. It's a bit of a snapshot of history in a way. Getting back to American Airlines, that Astrovision must have seem like a revelation at the time. We take TV's for granted now on planes, along with having dozens of movies and TV shows to choose from, dozens of music channels, and games to play while we are cramped uncomfortably into seats most lapdogs wouldn't put up with. But at the time having a TV on a plane must have seemed out of this world.
I was really impressed that the Reel to Reel actually played. Many older tapes tend to peel apart and shell out. Recording studios spend a lot of time and money with special ovens to warm them up and make them playable again, if only long enough to transfer them to digital.
"NOT FOR SALE, which immediatly means I have to buy it." Laughed my ass off. I love this guy!
They still sell that chef boyardee pizza mix in the US
Wow if only there were places that sold ready made pizzas they could make a fortune.
Techmoan I just had an idea...
I have some pretty good memories of making and eating the Chef Boyardee pizza kits as a kid. It always makes me smile to see them on supermarket shelves. In terms of pizza you can make it home, it's some of the best out there.
My mother still buys them on a regular basis 😂
Making the dough is pretty easy even without a pre-mix. All it takes is flour, water, some yeast and a little salt. For making an entire baking tray's worth, use 500g of flour, one small pack of dry baking yeast and a teaspoon of salt. Stir little water into the flour until the clumps turn into the typical stringy dough. Let sit for 10-15 minutes and spread onto the baking tray (should have some flour and/pr oil on it to prevent the dough from sticking). Done.
Odditapes? Audities.
Hey
The legends are true...
Space Odditapes
The level of sophistication that isTechmoan is unreachable for most human beings.
I can't get enough of this amazing channel Techmoan, I could watch videos on tape formats for days.
A GUNSHIP CASSETTE!! - of all your wonderful collection, this is the item I am now most jealous of! Easily my favorites in my current music cycle.
The best Techmoan video so far is the CED RCA videodisc player! A vinyl record with movies on it! Got me hooked on his channel. :)
Great find and such a cool production. I used to have a few Reel to Reels from American Arline's (or the publicly sold copies) that I acquired in the 1980's when I bought a reel to reel to master my 4 track cassette up to.
I absolutely the tapes and the quality was remarkably good. I got to where I really loved watching the wheels move while listening to music that I'd put tapes in even when listening to some other medium. It was just that fun to have going on.
I do believe the songs were picked specifically for travel, excitement, feeling important or adventurous. all the songs I had were great even if they were just to pass the time until the next track, nothing really felt much like a downer that I can remember.
If I came round your house for a coffee, you'd have to escort me to the front door after 5 hours.
'Whats that switch over there for, what's that switch over there for'
Great video as well, especially stoned.
I would very much enjoy having a cup of tea with Mr. Moan. "A Cup of Tea with Mr. Moan" sounds almost like Beatles song.
For the benefit of Mr. Moan
Fascinating. I thought ZX Microdrive tapes were tiny, but the Sony NTC format is incredible.
Yes it's one of my favourite formats I've featured in a video. I'm so glad I could showcase it again here, because I'm sure there are quite a few people who've never seen it. You also have to consider that it's hard to judge scale when something is shown in close-up...you'd probably be even more amazed if you saw one in person.
Some say its a bit Hipster to release new titles on old formats, but doesn't matter to me because I like the warm nostalgia feeling that combining new and old brings.
What an amazing idea to make a brand new release for the DCC and MiniDisc! I hope this project pays of well. I sincerely wish those two formats (and DAT) would get back into production.
That DCC packaging is pretty cool.
D'awww Techmoan.... Helping the DCC Museum catalog all the produced tapes out there.
It's one thing to collect tapes for yourself,
and its another to collect it for all of history.
Watching this in Amersfoort as we speak (lovely Dutch town, 45 mins away from Amsterdam).
Awesome video as always, did wonder what was in the case behind you, didn't think it would just be cassettes knowing you. Nice shirt by the way! Your content is some of the best out there in UA-cam.
10:50 Jeremy Heiden's Indie music label still uses an MSN email. That guy must really love the '90s.
why doesnt he have an AOL hometown and email and a geocities website?, perhaps aol still sell their keywords too!
That NT tape output was outrageously better than I anticipated! It's a shame it wasn't out a few years beforehand! I also didnt realise that i'd missed the DCC and NT video, oh the shame.
Great Vid Mat! Something out of the ordinary :) Thanks!
That Golden Gunship Cassette made my day.
You're probably only one of a handful of UA-camrs I've watched whose production quality is so immaculate you'd easily get a deal with Netflix if only you'd ask. BUT. I wouldn't want to lose you to Netflix.
I can remember all formats but when I was a kid in the early 80's reel-to-reels were an extreme novelty in some quarters and everyone was getting excited over CD and were witnessing all of the CD's smeared in food & mud, scratched a little, cleaned and then played.
I remember the later formats in DAT, NT, MD and DCC and the minor format war broke out in the professional and consumer world and not one of them really survived but DAT appeared to be the winner due to it's adoption by recording studios for cheap and effective mastering purposes for making copies as well as backing up digital data.
All interesting stuff to look over!
I can just imagine what your storage room looks like with all these audio and video formats.
I swear to God, one of these days I will start saving for all those different old formats and I will get myself an HiFi as tall as my room will accommodate
I have a few of those American Airlines tapes. I enjoy them quite a bit!
Love this channel. When I get a chance, and put together my man cave I'll definitely be getting some of these old formats and collections for shiggles and ghits!
What I love about your videos is that you show me very interesting stuff, I never knew I could be interested in. Thanks for making them!
poetic justice - nice! love the tiny format. Thanks techmoan
It's amazing how times have changed with regards to in flight entertainment and flying in general. Hard to remember what it must have been like before affordable portable music in the 70s/80s. Being able to listen to music would have been a marvel!
The good old time when you ate a whole pig on the plane.
:)
@Thechmoan. PMDC Amesfoort (Netherlands) was a part of Polygram that solely dealt with audio and video cassettes. It was sold to the Canadian Cinram in June '97.
I think all your video's are all good worth watching, never a boring moment. I always learn something new. Keep them coming.
You could do a review on a duct tape and I would watch it. Love your videos. Greetings from Brazil
WD-40 and Duct Tape: Duo Heroes!
This is the most fascinating channel on UA-cam.
Don’t ever stop Techmoan. This channel is my bag. Same reason I like LGR or 8 bit guy I guess. Just good ol’ tech history for the soul.
I love the old cassette formats!
Everytime I tune into a Techmoan video an advertisement for the Jabra Elite wireless headphones starts. I’m tuning into a guy that understands tech, moreover, sound systems better than most. The algorithm still isn’t perfect.
My favorite song!...Techmoan I love your taste in classic hip hop! I've noticed you even have tapes from the rapper Paris. This was a very informative video! Thank you!
Thanks to your channel and your brilliant vids, people like me who have neither the money and/or space for these pieces of history still get to see them and enjoy them. Thanks muchly 👍
Wow, that NT tape sounded shockingly good
Who are the yahoos who hit the thumbs down? It's not click bate, it's not poorly produced, it's not missing info!
I'm addicted to your videos keep up the excellent work and thanks!
hah, techmoan again going full gangster with Poetic Justice soundtrack
He’s straight thuggin’.
I saw a video and he had the 36 chambers album
I really love learning all the history from your retro videos, keep up the good work and thanks!
I am completely stunned to hear that there is actually a new album release on DCC - the first one in twenty-one years! Pretty incredible. By the way: DCC has, in a way, lived on in digital broadcasting all these years until today. DCC compression system known as 'PASC' is essentially Musicam or MP2. And yes, that is indeed the pre-decessor to mp3. Interestingly, MP2 is still widely in use today digital broadcasting. I don't know about the U.S., but in Europe and the DVB-S system we use, all digital radiochannels still broadcast in mp2 because it's fairly efficiënt and is apparently a bit more robust in broadcasting services than mp3 is. Can you believe it, a digital broadcasting technology that has remained unchanged for 25 years with no real sign of it's nearing end? If you listen to FM or DAB+ radio, there's a good change is fed with a high bitrate MP2 signal as well. The British DAB system (without the '+') still uses MP2 but unfortunately at a low bitrate. But listen to the German public satellite radiostations: that's MP2 at max bitrate and therefore very much the radioversion of DCC - still going strong after more than 20 years.
Never even heard of DCC before.
They were a fad in the mid 1990's
I don't think they were ever sold in Danmark.
There was a moment there circa 1993 when cassettes were locked in a fierce competition with CD's because they cost half as much but sounded half as good. Digital cassettes were supposed to solve that problem. DAT and DCC were the major digital tape formats from the era. DAT found a home in studio production and server backup; DCC never had such luck. A shame, really, as it was a better format, since a DCC machine could play regular analog cassettes as well. It's all moot now, of course, since we have services such as Spotify and the concept of "the album" is all but dead.
The DCC cassettes also suffered the same problem as regular cassettes in the form of tape degradation and possible mechanical failure inside the cassette.
Oh, of course, they're still tape... but as with any digital source, if you have any signal at all, you have a complete signal, as opposed to an analog source, where signal quality degrades by some approximation of an inverse square. The selling point about "WOW DIGITAL" in 1993 was a valid one vs traditional analog cassettes. Obviously the same digital information stored on a modern device with no moving parts is going to be a more stable storage medium.
Tahnk you for sharing these forgotten formats.
Sony NT had 32khz sample rate and about 12-bits of resolution... Hardly cd but very impressive for the age and size!!
Note that (from Wikipedia), the system used "12 bit nonlinear quantization, corresponding to 17 bit linear quantization", so it presumably sounded a fair bit better than normal 12-bit
Damn, a new video right as I was binging through the other ones
What an interesting format. It reminds me of the minidisc. I was really impressed with the quality of the sound.
Your voice is soothing and helps you unwind.
Splendid video @Techmoan. I really enjoyed it, please make more of those once you collect enough stuff to make a second one.
Interesting, would love to see more videos like this, I know you have a lot of other odd recordings that have appeared in various videos
i love that you listen to 90s hip-hop
Techmoan you should do interviews to experts or people involved in this and all retro tech, it would be cool to have guests besides the puppets. Keep the great work.
On the inside of the DCC case it features the word "Amersfoort". This is a city in the netherlands. Polygram had a daughter company called PMDC in that city. Polygram was a Dutch/German entertainment company. Eventualy Polygram became part of universal music.
Oh my, yes, Astro Vision. Something I completely forgot. Ahhh wasn't it PIA tho that first started doing this on international flights or something. Ahh, old aviation.
love the formats . im a short wave listener and have been for 40yrs maybe a few articles on some retro short wave radios
Another brilliant video , I bought a DCC recorder in the 90:s to record my own band music but it kept going wrong so got a refund, bought a minidisc and that worked a treat still have it , but would still get a DCC player now for my retro HiFi stack .
09:30 Amersfoort! The place I've worked for years and I'll be moving there start of 2018! Lovely!
Great stuff. Each of these items could have their own video.
As always you have found wonderful treasures to share with us!
#3 Very cool how he put his stuff out via such rare formats as well as standard ones-- DCC lives😂
Ya know I have to say . I really love this channel . . he has an amazing voice and honestly it makes me wish i had a bigger place and more liquid bank account to collect these amazing format of items . i esp love the fact thsi guy digs Gunship as i have seen the Gunship cassette used
That American Airlines tape was made in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. That's like only 40 minutes north from my home. Pretty cool
darthmal1 That’s where the original site of the Ampex headquarters.
Very interesting. Techmoan needs to make videos about old phones from the 90s.
I had completely forgotten about DCC....so I really enjoyed the nostalgia of this video! I know the quality mostly depends on the playback DA conversion, but I'd love to hear an audio comparison between CD, MD, DAT, DCC & WAV, etc.
That pre-recorded NT Cassette music album was by far my favourite one. I would love to own an NT Cassette player (one that doesn't beep when you change the track) and play tiny NT Cassette albums on it, perhaps with some more album artwork on the cassette cartridge itself.
Another great video from my favourite youtuber, thanks for uploading 👍
I like the new stuff coming out for old formats; people making full boxed releases of C64 games, DCC albums, etc. There's something fun about it.
Perfect for dinner-time viewing. Thanks, Techmoan!
NICE! The American Airlines tape was made in Elk Grove Village - Always awesome to see things being made there and all over the world. :)
Yes! American Airlines did put out a series of compilation albums on reel-to-reel featuring selections from the Astrovision system where it features nothing but easy listening, background music like the one you hear in a department store or a supermarket, but it was hear on a plane. The Astrovision Music Program series was the reel-to-reel tape where you can get at any American Airlines flights where you can get a free album to hear 3 hours of easy listening background music on one reel.
5:13 gunship is such a good artist and the cassette looks slick as all heck
good to see something with the Dave Grusin name on it.One of my favorite all time musicians and doyan of many audiophile releases especially on his no moved on from GRP label.Good video.
Very interesting video! I'd never heard of DCC or NT cassette's before. Very informative.
That Chrysler Newport ad you showed really summarizes 1960's American car buying, "Who cares about logic?". I mean don't get me wrong, I'm American, and I love classic American cars, but that ad really does it haha. That '66 Olds Ninety-Eight in a two door configuration would easily be my dream car.
Another sick video!
A new release on DCC?!? How great is that? Just ordered one, as I am a huge fan of this format :) Thanks a lot for this!
Michael Gisiger Thank you for your support.
The tape arrived a few days ago. Really nice packaging. Thanks.
Did you send out the Jeremy Heiden picture disc for free to all buyers of the DCC? I got it yesterday and was very surprised.
Jeremy Heiden did that as a surprise to all the DCC and MD customers.
That's a real cool move. Thanks.
That's a really cool Gunship tape, do they still sell those?
No it was a limited edition from 2016.
loving the shirt and loving the content !! Super interesting and informative as always !!
Boy am i jelly of that gold Gunship cassette, could've guessed you'd have gotten your hands on one though!
I don't own either a DCC (would probably be cool to though!) or a MiniDisc player, but that Wicked Blue album seemed interesting being that it was being released on so many different formats, so I had to preorder a vinyl copy of it.
Those Sony NT are so incredibly tiny, I had to compare Techmoans zoomed in thumb on screen with my thumb.
Thank you so much for all your hard work and for making these videos for us :) I purged most of my obscure electronics over the years, but still have all my tapes, records, and cds. I do however have a set of late 1960s altec voice of the theater speakers that unlike all the others i've ever seen (most were plain black, meant for theater use) Mine are very pretty with wood lattice grills. 25w 16ohm! ;)