RIP Lou Ottens

Started by DreamTheory, March 14, 2021, 03:44:49 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

DreamTheory

electric: Epiphone Dot semihollow body, acoustic: mahogany jumbo, recording: Cubase Artist 11 or Tascam DP008

admin

#1



Lou Ottens, Inventor Of The Cassette Tape, Has Died
March 10, 202112:28 PM ET
BILL CHAPPELL


A Philips cassette tape is shown in 1965. Lou Ottens, who led the invention of the first cassette tape, has died at 94.
Alfred Assmann/Picture Alliance via Getty Images
Lou Ottens, who put music lovers around the world on a path toward playlists and mixtapes by leading the invention of the first cassette tape, has died at age 94, according to media reports in the Netherlands. Ottens was a talented and influential engineer at Philips, where he also helped develop consumer compact discs.

Ottens died last Saturday, according to the Dutch news outlet NRC Handelsblad, which lists his age as 94.

The cassette tape was Ottens' answer to the large reel-to-reel tapes that provided high-quality sound but were seen as too clunky and expensive. He took on the challenge of shrinking tape technology in the early 1960s, when he became the head of new product development in Hasselt, Belgium, for the Dutch-based Philips technology company.

"Lou wanted music to be portable and accessible," says documentary filmmaker Zack Taylor, who spent days with Ottens for his film Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape.

Ottens' goal was to make something simple and affordable for anyone to use. As Taylor says, "He advocated for Philips to license this new format to other manufacturers for free, paving the way for cassettes to become a worldwide standard."

But first, he had to invent it. Trying to envision something that didn't yet exist, Ottens used a wooden block that was small and thin enough to fit in his pocket as the target for what the future of tape recording and playback should be.

The result was unveiled to the world in 1963, and the "compact cassette" quickly took off: It was "a sensation" from the start, Ottens told Time in 2013, on the cassette's 50th anniversary.

"Lou was an extraordinary man who loved technology, even as his inventions had humble beginnings," said Philips Museum Director Olga Coolen. She noted that Ottens' original wooden prototype for the cassette "was lost when Lou used it to prop up his jack while change a flat tire."

Born in 1926, Ottens went from building a radio for his family during World War II — it reportedly had a directional antenna so it could focus on radio signals despite Nazi jamming attempts — to developing technology that would democratize music.

"Cassettes taught us how to use our voice, even when the message came from someone else's songs, compiled painstakingly on a mixtape," Taylor said. Describing how little things have changed, he added, "So next time you make that perfect playlist on Spotify or send a link to share a song, you can thank Lou Ottens."

Ottens was famously unsentimental about the invention that has accounted for some 100 billion sales, according to NRC. In a career devoted to seeking higher fidelity and advancing technology, he dismissed tapes as primitive and prone to noise and distortion.


True to their do-it-yourself roots, cassette mixtapes have long been a favorite of punk and rock fans. But their legacy also looms large in hip-hop, where aspiring rappers and producers have used the approach to showcase their ability to chop up other music and create something new. The mixtape ethos has survived — and even thrived — despite the move from magnetic tapes to CDs and digital formats.

Nearly 20 years after Philips introduced cassette tapes, Ottens helped the company to develop compact disc technology for the consumer market and, with Sony, to settle on a format that would become the industry standard.

"From now on, the conventional record player is obsolete," Ottens declared when production CD players emerged, as the BBC reported.


Cassette tapes gave new control to music fans, allowing them to create and share their own collections of songs in a cheap and easily portable format.

Similar predictions were made about the cassette tape. But interest in the format has surged in recent years, despite the remaking of the music industry in the digital and streaming age.

The resurgence is driven by a mix of nostalgia and an appreciation for tapes' unique status as a tangible but flexible format. For decades, music fans have used mixtapes to curate and share their favorite songs. Unsigned bands have also relied on them as a way to promote their music.

Those who have used cassettes to quickly record music include the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards, who famously said he captured one of his band's biggest songs in the middle of the night.

"I wrote 'Satisfaction' in my sleep," Richards wrote in Life, his 2010 autobiography. Adding that he had no memory of writing the song, Richards said he woke up one morning to find that his Philips cassette recorder was at the end of its tape — apparently, he concluded, he had written something during the night.

When Richards rewound the tape, he heard the song's now-iconic guitar riff and his voice saying, "I can't get no satisfaction."

For many, cassettes have kept their cult status because they fulfill a dual promise of being both affordable and personal. They can hold anything from a carefully sequenced lineup of rare recordings to children putting on their own radio show.

"It's the most accessible, easiest, cheapest way for anyone to record a piece of audio," Matthew David of the Leaving Records music label told NPR back in 2011, when cassettes were enjoying a renaissance.

The Purple Tape: Only Built 4 Collectors
THE RECORD
The Purple Tape: Only Built 4 Collectors
Cassette tapes have also become collectors' items. When Raekwon's solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., hit the market in 1995, for instance, it arrived in a rare purple-hued cassette tape that became a cultural touchstone and a hotly sought item.

Ottens' death follows a banner year for his invention. In 2020, a wide range of musicians found success selling cassette tapes, from Lady Gaga and Ozzy Osbourne to Selena Gomez and Gorillaz.

Coolen said the runaway success of Ottens' ideas surprised him.

" 'We knew it could become big but could have never imagined it would be a revolution,' " she quoted him as saying.

Dalai_llama

A fun portion of that interview to Dutch media is when Mr. Ottens talks about the resurgence of the cassette (and the Vynil-mania as of late):

"Nothing can match the sound of the CD. 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." More here:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/11/lou-ottens-inventor-of-the-cassette-tape-dies-aged-94

I am sure he is right when it comes to noise and all, though. Still, my faithful cassette player is running strong and I won't give it up. 20Hz to 20KHz (or 21KHz, with metal tapes.)

Thank you and rest in peace, Mr. Ottens.

HecticArt

I still have a few hundred cassettes that I can't bring myself to get rid of.
They were the soundtrack of my youth. RIP Lou.


Can't help but wonder -
After 37 minutes of the funeral,
did they have to flip him over?




Sorry.......I'll show myself out......

gumtown

Oh the days of rewinding tape back into the cassette with a pencil from players which decided to eat your tape.
Free "GR-55 FloorBoard" editor software from https://sourceforge.net/projects/grfloorboard/

gumbo

...and the miles of tape blowing in the wind when caught in a fence after someone lost their temper with a swallowed tape in the car and hurled it out of the window....   ::)
Read slower!!!   ....I'm typing as fast as I can...

BROCKSTAR

Sometimes I wish we could go back to those days. Sure I love technology but we're so blind and lost in it anymore that it isn't funny. Back then we had people copying songs from radios to cassettes, sharing them, trading them etc... And we discovered things then, but now we have the whole world in our hands via phone or computer and it seems like we can't find anything, ironic?

Chumly

I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. - Richard P. Feynman

Dalai_llama

Quote
Oh the days of rewinding tape back into the cassette with a pencil from players which decided to eat your tape.

Especially when 120 tapes came out and, if you would advance and rewind it too much, the air within the threads of tape would make the reel grow to the point of touching the other, and the player would inevitably bite them. I remember some industry exec saying that he thought people would listen to tapes, not fast forward or rewind all the time. He also said that top cassette players would not allow this to happen, since they had dual capstans and some counter traction to the reel being wound, which is true. But these cost upwards of $600 dollars at the time (some $1700 today with inflators applied.) They should have advertised 120-minute tapes only for people owning such machines. Sony and Maxxell found a good solution, selling 100 and 110 minute tapes instead.

(120-min were also more prone to break, since its plastic base was much thinner than regular 60- or 90-minute ones.)

Quote
Sometimes I wish we could go back to those days.

Not being the super nostalgic here, but depending on our age, many of us here recorded our guitar playing for the first time in a portable, mono cassette recorder. A friend of mine recently uncovered a very early recording of himself playing with Max and Igor Cavalera of Sepultura fame, probably dated 1982. I transferred it to digital and sent back to him, not sure what he'll do about it.

This Jaco Pastorius release is nothing more than one of those recorders placed on one of the tables of the club, and you hear a lot of the chatter from the people around it:

https://www.amazon.com/Back-Town-Live-Jaco-Pastorius-2014-05-03/dp/B01G47FDOA

But like you said Brock, some of these recordings were gold. Before I could afford buying any records, my older acquanitances would record them on cassette for me, and that's all the music I had.

HecticArt

QuoteNot being the super nostalgic here, but depending on our age, many of us here recorded our guitar playing for the first time in a portable, mono cassette recorder.
Those recordings were brutal, but so much fun!
When we got up hands on a cassette 4 track recorder, we thought we were king cool. The recordings were better, even if we weren't.

aliensporebomb

Ah I have THOUSANDS of analog tape cassettes in storage.  MANY, MANY 4-track master recordings and tons and tons of music recordings of various artists. 

I learned to produce records via 4-track recordings.  It's amazing how concise you have to be with a 4-track.   I'd try to make everything as stereo as possible.  You had to be clever and creative.

RIP "Mr. Cassette".
My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

DreamTheory

They chose to make the cassette design available for anyone. By sharing the invention they changed the world.
electric: Epiphone Dot semihollow body, acoustic: mahogany jumbo, recording: Cubase Artist 11 or Tascam DP008