Recorders, usually talking, are supposed to sit within the background, quietly absorbing sound with out contributing to it. They’re a impartial, inconspicuous product sort nearly by necessity. If you’re recording discipline audio, like making an attempt to seize the proper 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 cheaper but nonetheless really good microphones.

The gadget may also be tough to navigate, with some menu diving required to entry sure options that received’t really feel intuitive instantly. There’s additionally some kinks you’ll discover in case you’re coming from one other sort of recorder.

As one instance, I attempted to feed music from Spotify via the TP-7 to check the line-in capabilities, with a pair of headphones plugged into the output jack so I may monitor the sound. At the time, I didn’t understand that by default the audio nonetheless performed via each the plugged-in headphones and the on-device audio system. That is, 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 call with my boss. Can you please stop blasting that song.”

I used to be capable of clear up this little drawback, together with a couple of comparable snafus, by sifting via the thick little flip-book that’s the instruction handbook. But generally there wasn’t precisely an intuitive method of figuring that out with out handbook diving. And some interactions take a bit to get the cling of.

Leaving the recorder operating, for example, takes two button presses—one faucet of the crimson Record button, then a separate press of the Play button proper subsequent to it. On comparable gadgets from different manufacturers, you often simply faucet the Record button as soon as and it begins taping. These little idiosyncrasies are the worth you pay for one thing like this. (Besides, you already know, the precise value you pay for it.)

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Viewing the TP-7 from some type of hoity-toity skilled standpoint is probably a bit of disingenuous. Because the TP-7 is only a good time. It’s way more enjoyable than you’d count on a recorder to be. After all, 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 clean switches.

There’s additionally intelligent, well-thought-out capabilities that make recording extra attention-grabbing. If you 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 choice that may very well be nice for music producers fiddling a pattern or anybody checking their recordings for any secret satanic messages.

Also the power to combine and match inputs and outputs with the plugs on the high presents quite a lot 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 inexpensive (for Teenage Engineering) sampling gadget. By mixing and matching the enter and output cables between the gadgets, 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 totally intact.