Lou Ottens - inventor of the cassette tape dies

[shavefan]

Audio cassette tape inventor Lou Ottens dies aged 94 - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56355444

I have some cassette tapes in a box somewhere, I haven't had a tape player in years though.

Many good times had while cassettes played music, many road trips. Thanks Lou.

 

[emwolf]

wow, I literally had hundreds of cassettes. Great portable format and easy to copy vinyl on a decent system.

 

[Whiterook]

RIP. I kind of miss my cassette decks.

 

[shavefan]

Interesting quote from Ottens ("audiophiles" beware). . .

Ottens, who died on Saturday, had little patience with the renewed popularity of the cassette tape – or even vinyl.

“Nothing can match the sound of the CD,” he had told the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “It is absolutely noise and rumble-free. That never worked with tape … I have made a lot of record players and I know that the distortion with vinyl is much higher. I think people mainly hear what they want to hear.”

 

[Billski]

I have many cassettes. I love them , and bought a new cassette player to hear them.

 

[dmshaver]

Thank you, & R.I.P.

 

[ColtRevolver]

I still have a double cassette deck with my home stereo and one car with a factory cassette player. I still have a milk crate full of tapes.

 

[Roedeer]

RIP. A reminder that I need to buy a (new) cassette player, to transfer a few that I care about.

 

[StuMcB]

Have only just (since moving house) put my entire cassette collection in the attic. Over 1000 the wife and I counted. I was still listening to them on a proper old walkman or the house Technics system. Since getting Amazon music the need for them has dropped. Next it'll be my CD collection and who knows my record collection too.

I'm a product of the late 70's so grew up needing every new tune. And as we all know the 80's were the heyday for cassettes, well by me it was. so RIP Lou. Thanks for the memories, the stuck tape and the need to have a pencil in the car not for writing with.

 

[ZJ68]

Interesting quote from Ottens ("audiophiles" beware). . .

Ottens, who died on Saturday, had little patience with the renewed popularity of the cassette tape – or even vinyl.

He's right. For audio fidelity CD is objectively superior to cassette and vinyl. They have their own charms, but superior fidelity isn't one of them. You can get really good quality from a good tape and deck, but no one makes them anymore, and chances are they never will again.

 

[ZJ68]

 

[Mr. Bonney]

The shortfalls of cassette tapes for music only exhibit themselves in professional recording studios and high end home systems. For mobile sound equipment tape is perfect. So what they have alot of hiss, and their dynamic range isn't CD quality? With the top down cruising at 60mph in a car you don't notice it with all the wind noise. And while jogging a Walkman was the thing. Cheaper than CD, holding 90 minutes of tunes, and with no worry about theft makes it the ideal technology for mobile music. (No one is gonna break into my truck to steal a handful of cassettes)! Even new artists are releasing their material on digital tape formats. It must have enough sales to justify that.

Cassette tapes were kept "alive" IMHO because of church tape ministries. Here pretty much every other market for cassettes dropped precipitously after the widespread use of CD's, churches may have singlehandedly kept cassette manufacturers going with they huge buying volume of tapes for recording sermons. Most older folks who can't get to church probably still have cassette players. Niche market. So 30 years later we still have cassettes. You may recall that vinyl was also obsoleted and predicted to disappear - only to experience a resurgence after rappers continued to buy turntables for their break dancing stunts. Now turntables - and vinyl records - are experiencing a resurgence. I think the same is true with cassettes.

Just read that new advances in tape technology makes tape the only viable medium for long term storage of the amounts of data society is producing. Not CD, not hard drives, not the cloud. Tape. Perhaps such tech will trickle down to portable players again?

IBM Makes Tape Storage Better Than Ever

IBM just shattered previous records for magnetic tape’s data storage capabilities, ensuring it meets demand for the next decade

spectrum.ieee.org

Long live the tape! lol

 

[BudgetShaverGuy]

Interesting quote from Ottens ("audiophiles" beware). . .

Ottens, who died on Saturday, had little patience with the renewed popularity of the cassette tape – or even vinyl.

“Nothing can match the sound of the CD,” he had told the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. “It is absolutely noise and rumble-free. That never worked with tape … I have made a lot of record players and I know that the distortion with vinyl is much higher. I think people mainly hear what they want to hear.”

A true engineer will be wholly objective, and the fact this man said another invention was superior to his own based on facts alone, speaks volumes to the kind of man he was!

 

[shavefan]

A true engineer will be wholly objective, and the fact this man said another invention was superior to his own based on facts alone, speaks volumes to the kind of man he was!

Correct

 

[Alum of Potash]

Used to be that I could still head over to my local supermarket and find a C-90, normal bias two-pack. Used to be that I could head over to my local supermarket and find a pack of 80-minute CD-Rs. Not anymore.

I recently ordered the two-vinyl re-edition of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band, the one with the original album and another version made from out-takes. The original album (Czech pressing) had a large circular scratch from the factory, and the new mastering was lousy, burying Ringo's drums completely as compared to the original pressed edition. But I wanted to record the out-takes before sending everything back for a refund. How to do this? I didn't have any more CD-Rs, but I did have a C-60 with some stuff I could record over. So that's what I did. The sides of the alternative-take record being short, I had enough tape left to add on Lennon's three singles (A- and B-sides) from the 1969-70 period as well. Now, I have a nice early solo Lennon mix tape to listen to as I hardly ever haul out the singles to play on my turntable.

Lots of fun returning to the older technology.