Me and Portable Recording
Ever since I was a kid, I loved making audio recordings.
I remember borrowing a cassette recorder from my 3rd grade class (I think it was 3rd grade) and walking around my neighborhood with a microphone, recording various things. I may still have tapes of this somewhere. I should find and capture those tapes...
My dad got a small portable Panasonic? Sanyo? recorder at some point, which I used for a while, and I picked up hand-me-down cassette recorders along the way as well. I had recorded thunderstorms at home, or while camping, as well as "shows" of whatever. I had recorded fake commercials with my across-the-street neighbor, Brian, as well as various other things with him. I of course used the cassette recorders to load and save programs from my Texas Instruments as well.
Back then I knew that I liked doing this stuff, and had always wanted an Olympus Pearlcorder microcassette recorder. There was something about them, so small, that I really liked. In high school, I did eventually get a Radio Shack microcassette recorder, and I had transferred some Monty Python recordings onto a long-play tape, and some Morrissey onto the other side of the tape. It sounded horrible, but it was mine.
For a while, I had a "portable" Sony reel-to-reel deck which I loved the sound quality on. I recorded a show with my friend Dan, which I had eventually thought I would convert to CD when I heard about the fancy new Tandy CD Recorder that was out on the horizon.
I made, and then eventually bought a better recording interface for my Amiga, but somehow never made the connection that I could record live-audio with it. I wish I had.
Later in college, I picked up a Sony stereo recording walkman. That came with a small stereo lapel mic, and I had recorded a few things with that, including the "Loews Jingle" ("thank you for coming to Loews! Sit back and relax... ENJOY THE SHOW!") as well as a few movies I went to, including Mallrats, because why not. I had considered at this time to buy a Sony portable DAT recorder, but thankfully I decided not to get it.
At one point, I borrowed a minidisc recorder from Boba, which I recorded some conversations with friends about software/game design, as well as on another camping trip. There were issues with that one though, in that even though it recorded digital, I couldn't get the files off of the deck digitally. It was frustrating. I eventually analog-recorded the output from it and saved that as MP3s.
When the iPod revolution came, I eventually got a Belkin Tune Talk microphone device from my friends at Belkin, which was good, but I still didn't do much self-recording. I did build a "bootleg-mic" for my iPhone that has a lessened gain on it to record live concerts and such.
It wasn't until recently that my love of portable recording was once again rekindled when I found in the recycle pile at work, a Sony ICD-PX820 digital voice recorder. I love this thing. It's tiny (about half the width of my iPhone), records excellent quality (up to 192k mp3), has a mic input which I'm still exploring, can play back mp3 files as well... I've put some music I like onto it as a "just in case' kind of thing. It's also excellent in that it keeps time, so i alwayus know when something was recorded. It can split recordings, etc. And like typical Sony design, all of the controls feel different, so it's easy to use without light. I just love this little thing.
I'm considering using it to do a short (2 minute?) podcast, or at least to do personal recordings once a day to help clear my head. I've already used it a few times in the car to capture notes while i was driving.