When I bought my Tascam DR-03 used at Goodwill for $22, I knew it was a great value: a portable solid state recorder that still holds its own almost 17 years after its release.

Unexpected bonus: The previous owner had left a 2GB SD card inside. When I hit play, I wasn’t just hearing audio; I was transported.

First, it was a lady practicing piano. Then, a clip of a preacher talking about God in what sounded like a cavernous hall. And even a psychology class in some lecture hall at the University of Unknown.

My voyeuristic side kicked in, and I listened. But what struck me most wasn’t what was recorded, but how it sounded.

It was spatial.

Unlike a flat phone recording that tries to isolate voice and kill the background, the Tascam’s stereo condenser mics capture the room. I could hear the silence between the piano notes. I could hear the echo of the preacher’s voice bouncing off the walls. It gave the audio dimension…like being there.

Continue reading “Tascam DR-03 Review: Best Cheap Portable Recorder vs. Smartphone”

I dug my old Sansa e280 out of an unmarked cardboard box under the steps in my basement ready to laugh at my 2006/2007 music preferences. I plugged it in, hoping for five minutes of battery life, and scrolled past the albums—Taking Back Sunday, Rise Against, Ke$ha. It was a perfect mid-00s fossil.

Then I found a folder labeled RECORDINGS.

Inside weren’t songs. They were “Audio Blogs” I recorded many years ago with travel writers I used to work with. And underneath those was a file simply dated from a Tuesday in 2010. I hit play.

It was my old Shiba Inu. Barking, crying, being a puppy. Kenji passed away early this year, yet there he was again, transmitted through a scratchy internal microphone on a $200 MP3 player. I sat there with wired headphones, listening to my “good boy.” I’m not sure a cloud backup from the 00s would have survived this long. But the Sansa did.

Continue reading “SanDisk Sansa e280: The Blue Ring Time Machine”