I guess for the most part so has his inventions. Yea I know, there's still a lot of people who love the stuff.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/11/lou-ottens-inventor-of-the-cassette-tape-dies-aged-94
Note:
"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.” "
And yea - I know - what would you expect from the guy that invented the CD.
But I keep hearing Roger Nichols in the back of my head; from his book:
https://www.alfred.com/the-roger-nichols-recording-method/p/00-40830/
"Snap, Crackle, and Pop Music
By Roger Nichols
I originally got involved in recording music because I hated clicks and pops on records. I figured that the only way that I was going to get good quality recordings to play was to record them myself. I could then bring home two-track 15 ips copies to play on my stereo. Much better than the Rice Crispy sound of vinyl LPs.
When the Compact Disc became a reality, I was beside myself. I was also close by the side of any record company exec who could get me any discs to play on my new found CD player. Since CDs preserved all the characteristics of the original master tape, I could now enjoy music without the drawbacks of black vinyl.
VINYL VERDICT?
The first project I worked on that became a Compact Disc was Donald Fagen's Nighrfly album. I couldn't wait to get the CD in my hot little hands and compare it with the original mixes. When the CD arrived, I ran to my audio system and threw the CD into my player. After about 30 seconds I was ready to throw in the towel. The CD didn't sound anything like the final mixes. Was I wrong about digital audio? Was the Compact Disc truly inferior to the vinyl disc that it was to replace?
I started doing some checking with the mastering facility where we mastered the album. Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk in New York told me that the record company never asked for the 1610 digital master that we'd made. Instead, they had requested a 30 ips half-inch analog tape copy of our digital mixes. They then made the CD master from this analog copy. No wonder my CD didn't sound like the original mixes. After we raised enough hell, new CD masters were prepared and new CDs were pressed. I compared the new one to the original mixes. It matched perfectly. Whew!
This was in late 1982. I figured that there was a necessary learning curve for the record companies to get their act together and realize that digital audio Compact Discs should not be made from second or third generation analog tape copies. Isn't nine years enough time?
AJA-TA
In 1982, Donald Fagen, Gary Katz and myself gathered up all of the original Steely Dan tapes (15 ips analog) and transferred them to digital format so that they would not deteriorate any further. This was in anticipation of catalog re-release in the new Compact Disc format. The first two albums to be released on CD were Aja and Gaucho. I listened to the CDs and they were fine.
Mobile Fidelity is licensed to produce gold plated CDs of Aja and Gaucho. They called me up to ask me if I liked the sound of their pressings. I listened to them and compared them to the CDs from MCA. I figured that the only difference I would hear would be the difference between the gold plating and the aluminum plating on the stock CD. I was shocked! They sounded completely different. The gold ones sounded worse. The gold Gaucho CD was even a different speed, about a quarter tone sharper than the original CD from MCA.
A writer I know called me to ask if I heard any difference between the stock CDs and the gold CDs. I told him what I found. He said that he didn't hear any difference. The lightbulb went on in my thought balloon! The stock CDs that I had were produced seven years ago, and the ones that my friend used were just purchased at Tower Records. I jumped in my car and zipped over to the nearest record store and purchased new copies of the CDs in question. He was right, the new stock CDs sounded exactly like the gold CDs, including the pitch shift on the Gaucho CD.
The time we spent transferring all of the original masters was wasted. The record company in their infinite wisdom decided that when they needed new 1630 CD masters to send to the CD plant, that it would be better to use the EQ'd analog copy that had been sitting around for fifteen years instead of the digital tapes that we supplied to them nine years ago for just this purpose. And on top of everything else, they couldn't even make sure that the analog machine that played back the Gaucho tape was going the right speed.
I guess this is all just a part of a grander scheme - make all of the CDs sound worse and worse until we can't tell the difference between Compact Discs and the new Digital Compact Cassette that the record companies are pushing. I went to my storage locker and found all of my old vinyl LPs. I haven't thrown my turntable away yet either. Maybe the clicks and pops aren't quite so bad after all.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/11/lou-ottens-inventor-of-the-cassette-tape-dies-aged-94
Note:
"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.” "
And yea - I know - what would you expect from the guy that invented the CD.
But I keep hearing Roger Nichols in the back of my head; from his book:
https://www.alfred.com/the-roger-nichols-recording-method/p/00-40830/
"Snap, Crackle, and Pop Music
By Roger Nichols
I originally got involved in recording music because I hated clicks and pops on records. I figured that the only way that I was going to get good quality recordings to play was to record them myself. I could then bring home two-track 15 ips copies to play on my stereo. Much better than the Rice Crispy sound of vinyl LPs.
When the Compact Disc became a reality, I was beside myself. I was also close by the side of any record company exec who could get me any discs to play on my new found CD player. Since CDs preserved all the characteristics of the original master tape, I could now enjoy music without the drawbacks of black vinyl.
VINYL VERDICT?
The first project I worked on that became a Compact Disc was Donald Fagen's Nighrfly album. I couldn't wait to get the CD in my hot little hands and compare it with the original mixes. When the CD arrived, I ran to my audio system and threw the CD into my player. After about 30 seconds I was ready to throw in the towel. The CD didn't sound anything like the final mixes. Was I wrong about digital audio? Was the Compact Disc truly inferior to the vinyl disc that it was to replace?
I started doing some checking with the mastering facility where we mastered the album. Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk in New York told me that the record company never asked for the 1610 digital master that we'd made. Instead, they had requested a 30 ips half-inch analog tape copy of our digital mixes. They then made the CD master from this analog copy. No wonder my CD didn't sound like the original mixes. After we raised enough hell, new CD masters were prepared and new CDs were pressed. I compared the new one to the original mixes. It matched perfectly. Whew!
This was in late 1982. I figured that there was a necessary learning curve for the record companies to get their act together and realize that digital audio Compact Discs should not be made from second or third generation analog tape copies. Isn't nine years enough time?
AJA-TA
In 1982, Donald Fagen, Gary Katz and myself gathered up all of the original Steely Dan tapes (15 ips analog) and transferred them to digital format so that they would not deteriorate any further. This was in anticipation of catalog re-release in the new Compact Disc format. The first two albums to be released on CD were Aja and Gaucho. I listened to the CDs and they were fine.
Mobile Fidelity is licensed to produce gold plated CDs of Aja and Gaucho. They called me up to ask me if I liked the sound of their pressings. I listened to them and compared them to the CDs from MCA. I figured that the only difference I would hear would be the difference between the gold plating and the aluminum plating on the stock CD. I was shocked! They sounded completely different. The gold ones sounded worse. The gold Gaucho CD was even a different speed, about a quarter tone sharper than the original CD from MCA.
A writer I know called me to ask if I heard any difference between the stock CDs and the gold CDs. I told him what I found. He said that he didn't hear any difference. The lightbulb went on in my thought balloon! The stock CDs that I had were produced seven years ago, and the ones that my friend used were just purchased at Tower Records. I jumped in my car and zipped over to the nearest record store and purchased new copies of the CDs in question. He was right, the new stock CDs sounded exactly like the gold CDs, including the pitch shift on the Gaucho CD.
The time we spent transferring all of the original masters was wasted. The record company in their infinite wisdom decided that when they needed new 1630 CD masters to send to the CD plant, that it would be better to use the EQ'd analog copy that had been sitting around for fifteen years instead of the digital tapes that we supplied to them nine years ago for just this purpose. And on top of everything else, they couldn't even make sure that the analog machine that played back the Gaucho tape was going the right speed.
I guess this is all just a part of a grander scheme - make all of the CDs sound worse and worse until we can't tell the difference between Compact Discs and the new Digital Compact Cassette that the record companies are pushing. I went to my storage locker and found all of my old vinyl LPs. I haven't thrown my turntable away yet either. Maybe the clicks and pops aren't quite so bad after all.
