Recorders, typically talking, are supposed to sit within the background, quietly absorbing sound with out contributing to it. They’re a impartial, inconspicuous product kind virtually by necessity. If you happen to’re recording subject audio, like making an attempt to seize the right loon name out within the wild, you’d be higher served by a correct shotgun mic to pinpoint the sound. Audio recorded straight in a studio sounds nice on the TP-7, however once more, you may deal with that with some far inexpensive but nonetheless really good microphones.
The machine can be difficult to navigate, with some menu diving required to entry sure options that received’t really feel intuitive immediately. There’s additionally some kinks you’ll discover in case you’re coming from one other kind of recorder.
As one instance, I attempted to feed music from Spotify by way of the TP-7 to check the line-in features, with a pair of headphones plugged into the output jack so I may monitor the sound. On the time, I didn’t notice that by default the audio nonetheless performed by way of each the plugged-in headphones and the on-device audio system. That’s, till my girlfriend got here in from the opposite room, laptop computer in hand, to faucet me on the shoulder and say, “I’m getting on a name with my boss. Are you able to please cease blasting that song.”
I used to be capable of remedy this little downside, together with just a few comparable snafus, by sifting by way of the thick little flip-book that’s the instruction handbook. However typically there wasn’t precisely an intuitive method of figuring that out with out handbook diving. And a few interactions take a bit to get the grasp of.
Leaving the recorder operating, for example, takes two button presses—one faucet of the pink File button, then a separate press of the Play button proper subsequent to it. On comparable units from different manufacturers, you normally simply faucet the File button as soon as and it begins taping. These little idiosyncrasies are the value you pay for one thing like this. (Apart from, you understand, the precise value you pay for it.)
Women Simply Wanna Have Enjoyable
Viewing the TP-7 from some type of hoity-toity skilled standpoint is probably just a little disingenuous. As a result of the TP-7 is only a good time. It’s much more enjoyable than you’d anticipate a recorder to be. In spite of everything, you’ll recall that the entire entrance disc spins when you’re recording, and the factor simply feels nice in your hand, with all its clicky-clacky buttons and easy switches.
There’s additionally intelligent, well-thought-out features that make recording extra attention-grabbing. If you happen to press the Play button a second time whereas playback goes, the disk will reverse its spin and play the audio backward. It’s a enjoyable little possibility that may very well be nice for music producers fiddling a pattern or anybody checking their recordings for any secret satanic messages.
Additionally the flexibility to combine and match inputs and outputs with the plugs on the high presents an excessive amount of flexibility for combining with different audio gizmos. I paired the TP-7 with one other of Teenage Engineering’s creations: the EP-133 K.O.2, a remarkably reasonably priced (for Teenage Engineering) sampling machine. By mixing and matching the enter and output cables between the units, I may document from the sampler into the TP-7, then manipulate the sound there and port it again over to the sampler, with the DJ scratch sounds absolutely intact.
