Announcement: mp2enc 2021-1 now generates files for DCC-Studio directly!

A few moments ago, I posted mp2enc MPEG-1 audio encoder v. 2021-1 on Github.

You can always find the latest version of mp2enc here.

mp2enc is a modified version of the “dist10” sample code that was distributed by the MPEG group to demonstrate audio encoding and decoding. I found it last year when we did the Ben Liebrand DCC Release. I modified it so it can process WAV files with different numbers of sample sizes besides 16 bits, and processes the audio using 32-bit floating point.

But previously, I still had to use my DCCU program to convert the MP1 files to MPP, LVL and TRK files. In the new version, that’s no longer necessary: with a single command, the mp2enc program now generates the files that you can copy straight to your DCC-Studio audio directory to record them onto tape with your DCC-175 with PC-Cable.

This is exciting news for owners of a DCC-175 with PC-Cable: they can now convert WAV files for use with DCC-Studio without the need to use the slow DCC2WAV program that Philips distributed. Converting a file with mp2enc is much faster than DCC2WAV (it only takes a few minutes to convert a song, not an entire day) and the mp2enc converter can handle more formats besides 44.1kHz 16 bit WAV files.

There is of course also still a lot of room for improvement. In the future I hope to make my own version of DCC2WAV, with a graphical user interface, easy editing of titles, creation of compilation tapes, encoding from and decoding to many other audio formats such as MP3 and FLAC, and perhaps even direct recording to DCC with a self-made interface connected to a modern computer through USB.

===Jac

5 Likes

Great work @Jac !
Looking forward to using it one day!

Hi Jack
Please let us know if this program may be used with some modifications on windows 10
What benefits for those who don’t have this player cable and studio program
Do you have any ideas how to benefit us all with your program thx

The program should be usable with any version of Windows from Windows 98 to Windows 10. It may even work with Windows 95 but I only tested with Windows 98 and Windows 10.

If you don’t have the DCC 175 and PC cable, you can still use it to create MP1 files that are encoded in the same way as DCC recorders do. I guess you could use it to demonstrate how good DCC sounds.

I’m working on a few hardware projects, that will eventually allow you to record files from a computer onto DCC, and play back DCC’s to the computer (for backup purposes) using a USB port and software running under Windows 10. For the DCC 175 it will be possible to plug such a cable into the existing PC cable connector; for other recorders it will be necessary to make modifications. But it should eventually be possible on all recorders.

=== Jac

3 Likes

Update: I uploaded a new version 2022-1 yesterday.

===Jac

2 Likes