RIP Lou

An other Great one, his cassette is a very fond memory of my first steps in music listening.

G

He certainly had a philosophy re audio.  Wonder what his belief was re if different cassette tapes sound different, something friends and I argued about incessantly when trading mixtapes.  BTW, they do!

There is an excellent documentary about the development and rise of the cassette format that features Lou.

"Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape" is HIGHLY recommended!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMZIhvxnAg4

The full documentary has been on Hulu/Amazon Prime/Netflix.

R.I.P. Lou. Thanks for the tapes...

“I think people mainly hear what they want to hear.“

Now that’s a line that could be used a lot more on this Forum!

And the everpopular,
"They think you can hear what they hear."

Lou came around just in time to rescue me from ever having to listen to 8-track. RIP. 

RIP Lou you made thousands of Deadheads very happy for decades bless you.

"Here  . . . . you like this album . . I made a cassette recording of it for you.  Enjoy."

And to some degree, that carries on today with sharing of music files.

Many thanks to this man for giving this to the masses.

The only thing i can say to that is it is all about the recording not the format it is on.

There was something about making mixed tapes where I would even put thought into the title I made for it after I wrote the song list on the sleeve that was somewhat lost with CD-RWs. I didn’t miss the unraveling and heat sensitivity when a cassette was left in a hot car and the sound quality of taped typically wasn’t anything to write home about, but I still enjoyed them until cd stores starting popping up in every mall. It feels like tapes went away much more long ago than they actually did. They really are associated with a general cultural era for me when everything somehow seemed much more innocent and generally optimistic than today (even if the pandemic hadn’t hit the world).

Although not as wide spread as the vinyl revival, the cassette has a little bit of resurgence.

There is even a Cassette Store Day now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_Store_Day

I never left the cassette and still enjoy making tapes.  No, it's not about the sound quality, but the hands on aspect.

I was celebrating my 10 birthday in 1985. I got my first Sharp BoomBox with cassette player. My first birthday cassette (picked out by my mother) was Styx Mr. Roboto 😁.

RIP Lou!
A moment of hiss for you sir!

The advent of cassettes expanded my world forever, all thanks to this man. Still got a drawerful of personally curated, carefully titled 90-minute "playlists" in an easy-access drawer plus a functioning player straight into the preamp.

I deem tomorrow Make Believe It's International Cassette Tape Day. Good timing when your streamer and DAC are not on speaking terms.

R.I.P. Lou

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.
- Paul Simon

Thank you, Lou, for your contributions to this hobby that made me an adherent. Pioneers like you don't come around often enough.

All the best,
Nonoise

What a great thread on cassettes.  Thank you, Bless you, and RIP Mr. Ottens.

Every post so far is a bulls-eye in relatability for me.  To 15 year old newly-drivers-licensed music lovers, cassettes weren’t a luxury anymore than the internet is today.  A little hyperbole to make a point, but not much.

1.  It’s how we shared music as @beans57 points out.  “Copyright this” said we irreverent kids.
2.  It’s how we took music to our cars
3.  It allowed us to create mixes whether for home or car per @Parker65310....And yes...even titling was a creative process.

4.  It’s how we corrected poorly recorded or mixed LP’s.....

......My best friend and I were not just music lovers we were audiophiles and cassettes allowed us to do something rather amazing.  With our 5-7 (fuzzy on which we had) band equalizers we corrected a record’s shortcomings and recorded the improved version to cassette.  So, in the car you didn’t need an equalizer to fix a bad recording.  It was already fixed by us....the sound engineers.  Lol.  Just awesome.  Store bought cassettes of the same album were a SQ disaster, comparatively.  

I don’t yearn for the ritual of vinyl, but am glad so many enjoy it.  However, making tapes....just fantastic.  My friend and I sitting there for hours....making tapes.  And later, at the appropriate age..making the beer companies rich.

@Thosb..Do you mean you guys argued over IF tapes sounded different at all or which tape sounded better?  I can’t imagine debating the former.  We would record the same songs on different brands and formulas—-Metal v. Chromium Dioxide (IIRC).  Don’t remember what formula preceded those two.  We pretty much agreed TDK was a tough act to beat, although most were pretty solid.

Another benefit for the car:  We could increase the S/N parameter and in effect make a “louder” tape that would play louder.  It gave an overall decibel boost, basically.  Making the most of whatever watts you had in your “head unit”.

Frankly, it’s the recording of cassettes that made the difference.  Making tapes.  Simply buying tapes to play in my car wouldn’t provide a particularly fond memory for me.  The high cost, the (often) poor quality SQ, the inability share “free” music among friends.

Jbuhl....Outstanding.  Will be checking the documentary.

+1. Nonoise

+2, nonoise.  
R.I.P.  Mr. Ottens.

I mostly just bought records, then recorded them, either on TDK or Maxell CrO2 tape. I liked the Metal tapes too, but they were much more expensive for a teenage hifi kid. Vinyl-to-tape cassette just sounded so much better than a store-bought copy. And of course my equalizer was influencing how good the tape sounded in my car too. My car too had an equalizer and so could make up for any deficiencies when on the road.

I had several nice home tape decks but the best was a Teac R999X purchased while in the military. The auto-reverse feature was problematic but that deck had great record features allowing beautiful sounding cassettes to be made.

Car audio was for many years the bastion of cassettes. Thank you Mr. Otten for the product and the memories.

RIP