I’m still not sold on this whole podcasting thing—I fill the audio channel of my workday with background noise: NPR or the same music I’ve been listening to for 30-40 years. I find that podcasts require active engagement, so my podcast diet is pretty sharply limited to ex-community radio guys and other folks who have experience with the audio form. That’s not to say that I don’t actively listen to some things; having spent a few years in the recording industry, it’s impossible for me not to listen deeply. It’s just that most podcasts just aren’t quite there, qualitatively, yet. I much prefer the written word for news, information, and even recreation.
That said, I can’t understand why gadgets like the Marantz PMD 660 aren’t taking the podosphere by storm. I first learned about these solid-state flash media recorders from my buddy Mike O’Connor who uses the little Marantz to produce his Sex and Podcasting podscasts. If units like the Fostex FR-2 had been available ten years ago, I would probably never have stopped recording live music in the field. Surely these have replaced the not-so-venerable Tascam DAP-1 DAT recorder by now, right? I see that the Oade Brothers are offering modifications to both the Marantz and Fostex recorders. Second generation solid-state recorders will almost certainly shrink in size and battery performance.
UPDATE: Monday, 08 August 2005 08:32AM CDT Mike O’Connor emails (from the Winnipeg Folk Festival, I think) to say that the current apple of his recordist’s eye is the Korg D4 Compact Flash 4-track portastudio. No uncompressed recording, and do digital I/O, but hey, what do you want for US$400.
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