In general, recorders are designed to operate in the background, quietly absorbing sounds without contributing to them. They are almost inevitably a neutral, inconspicuous product type. If you’re recording outdoors and trying to capture the perfect loon call in the wild, for example, you’ll be better served with a proper shotgun microphone to pinpoint the sound. Audio recorded directly in the studio sounds great on the TP-7, but you can handle that with much cheaper, but still really good microphones.
Navigating the device can also be difficult, requiring some diving into the menu to access certain features that don’t feel immediately intuitive. There are also some problems that you will find if you use a different type of recorder.
As an example, I tried feeding music from Spotify through the TP-7 to test the line-in capabilities, connecting a pair of headphones to the output jack so I could monitor the audio. At the time, I wasn’t aware that by default the sound still plays through both the connected headphones and the device’s speakers. Until my friend came in from the other room with the laptop in her hand, tapped me on the shoulder and said: “I’m on the phone with my boss. Can you please stop singing this song?”
I was able to solve this little problem and a few similar problems by going through the thick little flipbook that is the instruction manual. But sometimes there wasn’t exactly an intuitive way to figure this out without manual diving. And some interactions take a while to get the hang of.
For example, if you leave the recorder running, it takes a while two Press the button – once on the red record button and then again on the play button right next to it. With similar devices from other brands, you usually just tap the record button once and the recording begins. These little quirks are the price you pay for something like this. (Plus, you know, the actual price you pay for it.)
Girls just want to have fun
Looking at the TP-7 from a highly professional perspective is perhaps a little disingenuous. Because the TP-7 is just a good time. It’s a lot more fun than you’d expect from a recorder. Finally, you’ll remember that the entire front screen rotates as you record, and that the device, with all its clicky buttons and smooth switches, just feels great in the hand.
There are also clever and well-thought-out functions that make recording more interesting. If you press the play button a second time during playback, the hard drive will rotate and play the sound backwards. It’s a fun little option that could be great for music producers fiddling with a sample, or anyone checking their recordings for secret satanic messages.
The ability to mix and match inputs and outputs via the top panel connectors also provides a high level of flexibility for combining with other audio gizmos. I paired the TP-7 with another Teenage Engineering creation: the EP-133 KO2, a remarkably affordable (for Teenage Engineering) sampling device. By mixing and matching the input and output cables between the devices, I was able to record from the sampler into the TP-7, then manipulate the sound there and transmit it back to the sampler, leaving the DJ scratch sounds completely intact.