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Technics RS-DC10 DCC deckThe DCC format is thus already supported by European, American, and Japanese manufacturers. Whereas the Optimus recorder has a distinctive character of its own, however, the RS-DC 10's front panel clearly shows its affinity to the Philips DCC900. Except for a button or two, they appear outwardly identical. This pooling of resources should come as no surprise, since Philips and Matsushita (parent company of Technics) co-developed the DCC system. The RS-DC 10's front panel is clean and crisp, with the merging of analog cassette, CD, and DAT control features that defines the new DCC format. Primary transport controls are aligned along the center bottom of the front panel. The forward and back-ward skip buttons fast-wind DCC tapes to the next start marker (typically the beginning of a song or movement); with analog cassettes, the skip buttons take you to the next selection by sensing the silence between tracks. On prerecorded DCC tapes, you can find the track you want by using the skip buttons to browse through the track titles listed in the tape's table of contents (which the deck reads automatically when you load a DCC), even when the tape isn't running.
Most of the other transport controls-stop, pause, play, fast-forward, rewind-are basically conventional in their operation, though a few of them have slight twists. Pushing fast-for-ward or rewind during playback, for example, will put the deck into a fast wind until you release the button. The repeat button will repeat an entire tape or, for DCC recordings only, a single track. If you press play when the deck is already in play mode, it will wind back to the beginning of the current track and start over, and if you hit stop during recording the tape continues on for a moment while the deck marks the spot for easy location when you want to record more on the tape. To find that place again, you just press the Append button; the deck will then search the tape for the marker and put itself in record-standby mode, ready to roll. To record a tape from the beginning you normally would use the Record Auto button, which writes a lead-in marker and then puts the deck in standby mode.
There is, in fact, a whole cluster of buttons dedicated to manipulating tape markers for sophisticated control over tape playback (strictly optional- you don't absolutely need any of them to make the deck play or record).
Pushing the Start Marker Auto button causes the deck to automatically record a start marker wherever it encounters a 3-second blank space on the tape (you can use the record-mute button to create such blanks if you need to). The Start Marker Write button enables you to insert start markers manually wherever you like. The Next Marker Write button creates a marker that tells the deck to fast-forward to the end of the tape, switch direction, and start playback from the other side, whereas the Reverse Marker Write button creates a marker that makes the deck reverse immediately. The Erase Marker button removes markers, and the Start Marker Renumber button cleans up an edited tape (after markers have been added or erased) by renumbering all start markers in sequential order.
Analog-input recording levels are adjusted with a large knob, balance between the channels with a smaller knob. Of course, no level controls are needed when using the digital inputs. A three position input selector gives you a choice of analog, coaxial digital, and optical digital inputs. The deck automatically senses the three standard sampling rates (32, 44.1, and 48 kHz) for incoming digital signals and adjusts itself to accommodate them. The sampling rate used for analog inputs is 44.1 kHz. And for playback of analog cassettes, you can select Dolby B, Dolby C, or no noise reduction. The RS-DC10 also has a timer button for use with an external timer and a headphone jack with volume control.
A number of small buttons are used to operate the blue fluorescent display. When prerecorded DCC tapes are played, the Text button switches the display between album title, artist name, track title, and total number of tracks and time. (Text information is not available for user-recorded DCC tapes or analog cassettes.) For DCC tapes, track number and elapsed time within the current track normally appear. The counter button switches the display between elapsed track time, elapsed tape time, remaining time on a side, total time remaining on a tape, and a simple tape counter. Curiously, only the tape counter display works when analog tapes are played (we don't see why elapsed time couldn't have been made available as well), so the counter button has no function when playing them back. In addition to text information and time and tape counters, the fluorescent display flashes status messages when appropriate ("no cassette," for example), and there are indicators for play and record modes, repeat modes, tape direction, tape travel, sampling frequency, input type, copy prohibit, and Dolby setting, as well as various marker modes. There are also bar graphs for left and right channel signal level. They display levels during both recording and playback. The bar-graph scales change value depending on whether digital or analog tapes are used: -50 dB to 0 dB for DCC and -40 dB to +10 dB for analog tape.
The RS-DC10's back panel provides the expected connector complement: pairs of phono jacks for fixed line-level analog output, variable line-level analog output, line-level analog input, and coaxial digital input and output, plus a pair of Toslink connectors for optical digital in and out. As with all consumer digital recorders, the RS-DC10 contains Serial Copy Management System (SCMS) circuitry. You can record digitally from CD (or any other digital source, including another DCC), but the DCC dub itself is coded to prevent any second-generation digital copying. You can make as many direct digital copies of the original as you like, however, and there is no restriction on copying via the analog inputs. Digital copiers will be delighted to know that the RS-DC10 automatically records track numbers from CD, DAT, or DCC sources when making a digital copy (the Auto Start Marker button enables this).
A look inside the RS-DC10 revealed very tidy construction and a parts complement that is quite consolidated for a first-generation product. Philips Bitstream 1-bit analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog (D/A) converters are employed, along with four PASC encoder/decoder chips. After A/D conversion (if necessary), the encoder divides the input signal into thirty-two subbands, each 750 Hz wide, calculates the average signal level in each band, applies a masking-estimation algorithm, and allocates bits to the parts of the signal that require coding. The decoder rejoins the bands and restores the data to linear PCM format for processing by the D/A converters.
The transport employs two DC motors for the capstan and reels; a third motor is dedicated to the tape drawer. The multitrack thin-film tape head flips over when the tape changes directions. There are two azimuth locking pins (ALP's) to hold the tape taut against the head and its fixed azimuth tape guide (FATG) slots to maintain correct tape alignment. As with all DCC decks, there is no erase head since recording is accomplished by writing new data directly over the old. It is important to note, by the way, that head demagnetizers and conventional cleaning cassettes should not be used on DCC heads.
The RS-DC10's twenty-nine-key wireless remote duplicates the front-panel buttons for transport control, side switching, repeat, text and counter manipulation, and so on, as well as drawer open/close for those who want to try to load cassettes from across the room. More usefully, it also adds output volume up/down, ten-key direct track access (for prerecorded DCC tapes only), and a music-scan feature to audition the first few seconds of each track.
The RS-DC10 also comes with a nice, juicy sales incentive: free software. While the deck will play back your existing analog cassettes and enables you to record your own DCC cassettes, Technics figures you will also be anxious to start a library of prerecorded DCC tapes. To help establish your new collection, Technics is offering ten free prerecorded DCC tapes with the purchase of an RS-DC 10-your choice from a variety of titles on four different record labels, mailed directly to you.
The RS-DC10 measured very well on the test bench, exhibiting extremely flat DCC playback response, very low noise and distortion, and excellent low-level D/A linearity. And its record/playback measurements rivaled those of a DAT recorder-again, very flat frequency response combined with low noise, distortion, and converter nonlinearity. In fact, the errors in the A/D and D/A converters apparently canceled somewhat, yielding better linearity for a complete trip through the recorder than for playback only. Analog playback measurements were respectable, but not as good as those of a topnotch analog-only cassette deck. Wow and flutter, in particular, were rather high. Another weakness of the transport is its fast-wind speed, which makes track access rather slow, at least compared with CD, MD, and DAT. Moving from the test bench to the listening room, I first put the RS-DC10 through its paces, checking its various features. Everything was in order, including the very nifty convenience of browsing through the track-title index, choosing a track, and hitting play to make the RS-DC10 find and play it. DCC's smart sensing enables the deck to find the shortest distance to a track, flipping sides as required, which cuts down on the waits imposed by the relatively slow tape spooling.
On the other hand, I am disappointed by the distinctions between prerecorded and user-recorded DCC tapes imposed by the DCC format. Prerecorded tapes have various perks, such as track-title indexes, that you can't put on a tape yourself or copy from a prerecorded DCC tape. These limitations, which were imposed to mollify record companies, lead to confusion for the end user, particularly when controls do different things depending on whether you are playing a prerecorded or user-recorded tape. For example, the RS-DC10's remote control permits direct track access for prerecorded tapes, but not for user-record-ed ones. Frustrating.
To check the RS-DC10's susceptibility to head clogging, particularly from playback of analog tapes, I loaded an analog cassette, punched in continuous-loop playback, and let the machine cycle through the cassette for 48 hours. At the end of the test, although the tape drawer had a good sprinkle of shedded oxide at the bottom, the cassette played back without fault, as did DCC tapes. Incidently, a number of people have asked me about the two square recesses on each side of DCC shells: They will be used to load tapes in future DCC changers.
Finally, I did some critical listening-a more crucial step for a deck built around a perceptual coder, such as DCC's PASC system, than for CD players and DAT recorders, which use straight linear pulse-code modulation (PCM). With linear coding, you can be more confident of the correlation between measurements and sonic performance than you can with perceptual coding, which is designed to exploit the masking of one sound by another in human hearing, devoting storage capacity to sounds presumed to be audible while ignoring those thought to be inaudible. Depending on the sophistication of the perceptual-coding system used, sound quality may be better or worse than the measurements might suggest.
After enjoying my small library of prerecorded DCC tapes, as well as a few digitally copied tapes, I was well satisfied with the RS-DC10's sound quality. There is no question in my mind that DCC's PASC encoding scheme can provide fidelity that is virtually indistinguishable from that of compact discs, and the RS-DC10 again proved the point. Both classical and pop prerecorded tapes sounded great, and after trying for some time to distinguish by ear between my digitally copied tapes and the original CD's, I finally gave up and simply succumbed to the outstanding DCC sound.
The RS-DC10 thoroughly validates the philosophy behind DCC, that a snazzy new digital recording format can peacefully coexist in the same box with a long established analog format. It's an amazing feat, and the RS-DC10 is a terrific example of this new breed of audio component. ![]() |