Play it back

Matt posts about iTalk and says:

“It’s crazy to think you can store something like 20 hours of your own recordings with this and my mind races when thinking of how I would have used this technology when I was in college.”

Which makes me go ‘huh?’.

I got my first tape recorder when I was 9 (in 1972), which I used to record myself and my friends. (Unfortunately the cute little thing was lost during my parents’ divorce, my mother’s death and the ensuing mayhem. Have I ever written about that here? If not, I should.) There was a whole bunch of nothing in between, but I bought an AIWA recording walkman in 1989 and have had various gadgets to record stuff since then, tape, mini tape, DAT, MD. Most of them with better recording quality than the iTalk/iPod combination. So the technology to record stuff for posterity has been in the hands of ‘amateurs’ for ages. How come it’s only sinking in now the iPod can do it? (Other than that most teenagers, college kids would probably not be interested in preserving moments for posterity.)



In general, I think there are groups of people who don’t think about recording, or sound, at all. It’s something that’s done in expensive recording studios. With the coming of age of digital personal audio, the first exposure many pepople have to the concept is through crippled consumer apps.
Herb (link) – 02 March 2005 – 16:32

I had cassette recorders as well, but I thought the iTalk is significant because it’s tapeless and totally automated with iTunes.

Sure, I could have taped a lecture on a micro-cassette, but archiving that or sharing it with a friend was a bit of a pain. With an iTalk you could you setup a lecture section on a shared music server, posting an entire semester’s worth of lectures of any and all to download and reference.

Recording, downloading, and sharing audio is super simple with the iTalk. No mess with tapes.
Matt Haughey (link) – 02 March 2005 – 17:18

Matt, I think the difference is that I used to swap tapes with hundreds of people all over the world, so I never regarded it as difficult. I spent most of my college days with my cassette decks and recorder. I experience digital recording as less reliable – the files are on my HD, I lose them or the HD crashes. I burn to CD, but can’t seem to file them properly. I also care less about the digital files. I still have my thousands of cassettes and DATS and can find every recording I ever made, despite my bad organising and filing. And I would never lose them or throw them away. I sold one part of my collection once and regretted it bitterly. Now when I lose an mp3, I don’t care much (part of that is growing older and not hanging onto stuff as much).
Caroline (link) – 02 March 2005 – 17:47

you old luddites are a-dor-able! ;)
as a musician who hearts their MD long time, i also use the italk/ipod for my uni lectures, as i have been for about a year – the sheer ease of use as opposed to the MD is a dream. straight home and into itunes – bam! there’s all that good stuff i missed while i was napping. the audio quailty is not outstanding, but it serves it’s purpose well. it’s being hyped on at hte mo’, as lazy journalists see “FAD” and think they have discovered the lightbulb.

i’m not sure how the italk will handle me bootlegging the Vertigo tour, but i’ll try…
elmo (link) – 03 March 2005 – 02:23