From: marc@es.ele.tue.nl (Marc Heijligers)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: Re: Sony Mini-Disc Questions/Debate
Date: 26 Aug 92 08:18:31 GMT
	<MARC.92Aug21091602@mamba.es.ele.tue.nl>
	<1992Aug25.213444.5225@fid.morgan.com>
Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
In-reply-to: sethb@fid.morgan.com's message of 25 Aug 92 21:34:44 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.213444.5225@fid.morgan.com> sethb@fid.morgan.com (Seth Breidbart) writes:

   In article <MARC.92Aug21091602@mamba.es.ele.tue.nl> marc@es.ele.tue.nl
   (Marc Heijligers) writes:
   >
   >I don't know who did the review, but when I heard DCC myself yesterday, I can
   >only state that the recorded sound sounded exactly the same as the original
   >sound did.

   Really?  What kind of microphones were used, and what setup?  I'd love
   to be able to produce *any* kind of recorded sound that sounds
   "exactly the same as the original sound".  Unfortunately, nobody has
   ever achieved that goal.

   Or do you mean that the DCC sounded the same as the CD it was made
   from?

You're seem to be a smart guy to me. You managed to understand that 'the
original sound' did came from a CD. 

BTW, to be as puristic as you want to be: maybe I listened to a recording
which only consisted of synthesizer sound. No difficulties to record that (no
microphones needed). 

   >It is not ordinary chrome tape.

   One of the selling points for DCC was that it was ordinary tape, which
   could be produced cheaply.

As I said, the magnetic properties differ from 'ordinary chrome tapes' as used
for compact cassettes. The properties are more like video tapes. 

   > The information on the tape is 'digital' (in
   >fact it is analogue ofcourse), which means that a degradation of the tape can
   >hardly be noticed (a degraded '1' has to degrade very hard to become a '0').

   If it's that hard to degrade, why does dat use half of its real estate
   for error correction?

You are amngling two points. A DCC tape that is recorded properly will not
degrade as fast as analog recordings. 

Error correction is for already degraded tapes (drop-outs) and some future
degradation. CD has the same kind of problems. On DCC half of the information
also consists of error correction. 


   So he admits that DCC does degrade the sound.

He also tells that this is very hard to notice anyway. 

   > Copies were made up to more 
   >than 80 (...) generations, but the audio quality remained very high.

   In dat, 100 generations are indistinguishable from the master.

Well, then you must buy a DAT if making 100 copies is what is intresting you. 

My first interest is copying CD's, and I haven't been able to hear any
degradation of the sound. Maybe after some extensive testing for some hours,
days or weeks I'll manage to hear differences. I do can tell you that it
sounds much better than ordinary cassette players. It is (or will be) much
cheaper than DAT, and I can buy pre-recorded tapes for it. 

And hey, isn't this all about being satisfied? Have you heard DCC your own?
Can you judge how it sounds after copying 100 times? 

Theoretically you can have all kinds of opinions about the system, but your
ears will have to tell you about what you can or cannot hear practically.

Marc
Newsgroups: rec.audio