Teenage Engineering TP–7 Offers Reel Sensation of Tactile Controls

The touchscreen show is without doubt one of the best – and polarizing – innovations in trendy instances. Whereas a show interface on a cellular machine can rework into an infinite array of configurations and functions, that adaptability in utility comes at a value: shedding the sheer simplicity of working by tactile suggestions. It’s nearly all the time simpler to press a button or flip a dial than navigating a graphical interface – “faucet to open, scroll, and press.”

That is significantly true when capturing audio, a activity I typically depend upon whereas interviewing topics utilizing my iPhone. I make it a behavior to have the app prepared forward of recording to stop the dreaded occasion of “GAH! I wasn’t recording” each journalist runs into at one time or one other. Even when working appropriately I’m perpetually checking to verify it’s recording due to the dearth of bodily (and aural) indications my machine is appropriately recording.

The Teenage Engineering TP–7 area recorder is an attention-grabbing proposition, not a lot a compromise, however a digital recording machine designed to ask the fingers to intuitively make the most of bodily controls identical to an analog tape recorder of yore: the index finger triggers quick ahead, the center finger rewinds, the thumb information a memo, and the pinky selects the mode.

Simply as early computing and cellular machine design veered towards skeuomorphism – the method in making digital instruments resemble their real-world counterparts – so might be mentioned of the TP–7’s type, one mimicking the looks and motion of a motorized tape reel to obviously talk the machine is in truth recording.

Contained in the TP-7 is a brushed motor with ball bearings, and a extremely delicate corridor sensor that permits you to nearly seize your recording. The reel is a cool gimmick, however one that’s engineered for use together with a novel side-mounted rocker that offers the consumer the choice to clean, quick ahead, and rewind by contact. The complete bodily interface would take mere minutes, maybe seconds, for a brand new consumer to determine. It additionally comes with the perk of a scrubbing motion propelling the wheel accompanied with a ’hyperspeed’ sound for amusing impact.

Kudos to Teenage Engineering for additionally launching the TP–7 with an accompanying app to mechanically transcribe any audio interviews to textual content.

TP–7 options three stereo two-way jacks for use as both inputs or outputs, for connecting exterior mics, headphones, studio displays, or another audio gear like OP–1 area or TX–6, recording with all 6 stereo channels. The recorder is suitable with USB-C for multi-channel audio interface, MIDI, knowledge switch, and charging, with Bluetooth Low Power and MFi functionality for wi-fi connectivity. TP–7 additionally consists of our 6.35 mm to three.5 mm jack adapter, and as much as 128 GB of inside storage (which equates to five minutes of concepts a day for 20 years).

The Teenage Engineering TP–7 area recorder is just not designed for everybody, particularly at its eye-bulging value (the very cause I haven’t rushed out to purchase one myself). It’s by design a purposely explicit machine for explicit individuals. However for anybody who recurrently depends upon recording audio for skilled functions, we wouldn’t blame you for caving into the temptation to splurge laborious upon a tool engineered to report interviews, seize sound or music, or to make use of in comparable style as Twin Peak’s Agent Cooper in such trendy and touching style.

Gregory Han is the Managing Editor of Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, mountain climbing, tide swimming pools, and highway journeys, a number of his adventures and musings might be discovered at gregoryhan.com.