This old dictation gadget was terrible at recording voices. Living ones, that is.
My first full-time job as a news reporter, nearly 25 years ago, called for me to get a voice recorder. I bought the Panasonic RR at a pawn shop in Hobbs, New Mexico. It looked cool—thin, compact, sleek yet sturdy—and had a clever "dial" control. But it was early days for digital recorders, the recordings were of poor quality, and the aut…
