Wow...people are rewriting history here! DCC came about in 1992/1994 and it was loosely based on the Marklin/ Lenz command control system. DCC wouldn't work with the then command systems that were on the market so in a sense DCC is proprietary upon itself. For the first several years of DCC there was no decoders made that would work in the larger O gauge world...and there was no DCC sound decoders produced yet.
Lionel came out with TMCC in 1993/1994 and that whomped anything made in DCC.
Neil Young worked at QSI from like 1991-1992...I think to learn the sound decoder industry and take that knowledge to Lionel and invent TMCC.