Editing Digital Compact Cassette (section)

=== Data recording ===

There is only one DCC recorder that has the capability of being connected to and controlled by a computer: the DCC-175. It is a portable recorder that was developed by Marantz in Japan (unlike most of the other Philips recorders which were developed in the Netherlands and Belgium), and looks very similar to the other portables available from Philips and Marantz at the time: the DCC-134 and the DCC-170. The DCC-175 was sold only in the Netherlands, and was available separately or in a package with the "PC-link" data cable which can be used to connect the recorder to a [[parallel port]] of an [[IBM PC compatible|IBM-compatible PC]]. Only small quantities of both recorder and cable were made, leaving many people searching for one or both at the time of the demise of DCC.

The DCC-175 Service Manual<ref name=":0">[https://www.dccmuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/manuals/Philips_DCC175_Service_Manual.pdf DCC-175 Service Manual.] Retrieved 2017-01-24.</ref> shows that in the recorder, the cable is connected to the [[I²S]] bus that carries the PASC bitstream, and it is also connected to a dedicated serial port of the microcontroller, to allow the PC to control the mechanism and to read and write auxiliary information such as track markers and track titles. The parallel port connector of the cable contains a custom chip created especially for this purpose by Philips Key Modules, as well as a standard [[random-access memory|RAM]] chip. Philips made no detailed technical information available to the public about the custom chip and therefore it is impossible for people who own a DCC-175 but no PC-link cable to make their own version of the PC-link cable.

The PC-link cable package included software consisting of:

* DCC Backup for Windows, a backup program
* DCC Studio, a sound recorder and editor for Windows
* A DCC tape database program that works together with DCC Studio

Philips also provided a DOS backup application via their [[bulletin board system|BBS]], and later on they provided an upgrade to the DCC Studio software to fix some bugs and provide better compatibility with [[Windows 95]] which had come out just before the release of the DCC-175. The software also works with Windows 98, Windows 98SE and Windows ME, but not with any later versions of Windows.

The backup programs for DOS as well as Windows does not support long file names which had been introduced by Windows 95 just a few months before the release. Also, because the tape runs at its usual speed and data rate, it takes 90 minutes to record approximately 250 [[megabytes]] of uncompressed data. Other backup media common in those days were faster, had more capacity, and supported long file names, so the DCC backup programs were relatively unhelpful for users.

The DCC Studio application, however, was a useful application that made it possible to copy audio from tape to hard disk and vice versa, regardless of the SCMS status of the tape. This made it possible to circumvent SCMS with DCC Studio. The program also allowed users to manipulate the PASC audio files that were recorded to hard disk in various ways: they could change equalization settings, cut/copy and paste track fragments, and place and move audio markers and name those audio markers from the PC keyboard. It was possible to record a mix tape by selecting the desired tracks from a list, and moving the tracks around in a playlist. Then the user could click on the record button to copy the entire playlist back to DCC tape, while simultaneously recording markers (such as reverse and end-of-tape) and track titles. It was not necessary to record the track titles and tape markers separately (as you would do with a stationary recorder), and thanks to the use of a PC keyboard, it was possible to use characters in song titles that were not available when using a stationary machine's remote control.

The DCC Studio program used the recorder as playback and recording device, avoiding the need for a separate [[sound card]], an uncommon accessory at the time. Working with the PASC data directly without the need to compress and decompress, also saved a lot of hard disk space, and most computers at the time would have had a hard time compressing and decompressing PASC data in real time anyway. However, many users complained that they would have liked to have the possibility of using uncompressed [[WAV file|WAV audio files]] with the DCC Studio program, and Philips responded by mailing a [[floppy disk]] to registered users, containing programs to convert a WAV file to PASC and vice versa. Unfortunately this software was extremely slow (it takes several hours to compress a few minutes of PCM music in a WAV file to PASC) but it was soon discovered that the PASC files are simply MPEG-1 Audio Layer I files that use an under-documented padding feature of the MPEG standard to make all frames the same length, so then it became easy to use other MPEG decoding software to convert PASC to [[pulse-code modulation|PCM]] and vice versa.