Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Better than anything else, June 12, 2006
UPDATED: Marantz has fixed the hiss problem with a powered microphone. It is a great little unit--only small problem is that it's tough to see the levels in sunlight. I work as an NPR reporter. We are switching to these units from Minidisc recorders. And frankly, I wouldn't switch back--the ease of input from the recorder to a computer is wonderful. There is indeed, a problem with noise using a powered mic such as a shotgun. I use a 15db pad between the XLR connector and the mic to dampen the noice. Works fine. A stick mic works very well by iitself. I am told that Marantz is working on a fix.
The claim that the unit won't read SanDisk cards is nonsense--I've been using them for three months without a glitch.
The record-level display is a bit washed out in daylight.
True, I mostly record voice and ambient sound, rather than music.
So I can't comment on full fidelity. But our audio is as good or better than anything else on the radio.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I think some reviewers need to take a breath. This unit is just fine., December 15, 2006
OK, I'm a professional musician with 30+ years of experience, four years at Juilliard, albums on CBS/Sony; there are my bona fides.
Pro: Reasonable price, good quality, typical Marantz UI (you'll get the most out of it if you use common sense and read the manual), no moving parts, common media
Con: It's not perfect. So there.
Look, people: I read these reviews and I get the impression that the people giving bad reviews are the type that walk into a Chinese restaurant and get their panties in a bunch because there is no Italian food. This is a tool, meant to do certain jobs well, at a certain price point, nothing more. If you want flawless fidelity, spend a few grand on a fast laptop and great external pres and other hardware. If you have $500, a fast CF card (I have a SanDisk Ultra II 2Gb and just got a SanDisk 4Gb w/firewire reader, hallelujah!), and some commonly available rechargeable AA batteries, you're good to go unless you're planning a commercial release-quality recording. I've recorded live music, voice lessons, speech, and opera singers' demos on this (using external mics of course), and am very pleased with the quality and particularly the value. I agree with the one review that a good solution is condenser mics with batteries and turn off the 48v, but I made a damn good recording of a pro singer (who was likewise impressed) using a Neumann KMS105 straight into the Marantz with 48v on, mono, at 44.1.
There is no such thing as the perfect machine. Marantz is not trying to sell it as one. It's great for reporters (I liked the review from the NPR guy in Tucson, he gets it), and great for music pros like myself, if you appreciate the value AND the limitations. Look, if I want a perfect digital recording, I'll hire a recording studio. If I want a perfect digital recording of a live situation, I'll hire a sound engineer who has the high-end road rig. But for my needs, and at its price point, this one hits the spot. I'm only sorry that a few people rate this as if it were a nearly useless POS. Well, it isn't. Just goes to show you what unreasonable expectations will do!
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82 of 97 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I sent mine back, July 10, 2005
I can't say my experience will also be yours, but here is what happened to me.
I am a professional speech recorder. I record speeches and such to mp3 files with a small computer, and then transcribe them with a word processor. There are a few of us around and traditionally everybody in the field uses Marantz analog hardware. There has been a great excitement about recording to compact flash, and many of the former analog tape users are going over to Marantz' PMD 670 now. Aside from a higher quality recording, you can record continuously for several hours on a large compact flash card. No more flipping the tapes while recording, and so no lost material that you have to search the backup tapes for.
Anyway, for me, having seen the ready availability of the 660, and the price difference, I decided to give one a try. The fact that they had a pair of true balanced mic inputs (XLR) also impressed me, although I typically bypass the mic preamp when recording, using line-in with a higher quality mixer of my own. I found that recording to .mp3 was unfortunately poor quality. I cannot speak to wav recording, which may have been much better. And I found the sound to be distorting and breaking up enough to justify returning the device. I cannot imagine trying to record music to mp3 using the line input with the machine I received.
I know that it is relatively low-priced for the market niche so far, but I purchased it specifically for recording to .mp3, and thereby being able to record hours of speech to compressed files. I am afraid this device was not up to that task. Perhaps if I had recorded to .wav files, it would have made all the difference, but one gigabyte of high quality .wav is somewhere around 40 min - 1 hr, and so one would have to turn off the recorder, change the cf card, and reboot the machine, in the middle of an event that I am being paid to record? Out of the question. I only bought this device for making compressed, uninterrupted recordings.
The hardware is a little flimsy. The compact flash cover is weak and I can imagine breaking it pretty easily. The design clearly intended that you not frequently change out the cf card, but rather leave it in and use the USB connection to transfer your audio files. It has a screwhole for you to permanently screw it shut. So if you don't intend to remove the card very often, this is ideal. Others who like to take the card and manually insert it in a compact flash reader on the computer, well, don't break it! And the line-in connector is a cheap 1/8" stereo plug, just like on your walkman. Over the years, I have seen many of these break through repeated use, and would recommend more or less permanently taping or strapping an adaptor to this device if you use the line-in connector, so you don't have to put any more wear on this weak connector than absolutely necessary, so you might get a couple years' use out of it.
My recommendations would be to either buy the PMD 670 instead, or try something else, like a very small portable computer. I am still having to use the line-in on a very small mini-itx computer. I have to boot up windows every time, but it gets much higher quality recordings at the same recording quality and bitrate settings (44100 stereo, constant bitrate of 128), and I can record to .mp3, .ogg, whatever, and leave the recording program on for a week if I really want.
Other options may include the Edirol R1, which boasts of being able to do 32-bit sampling (far more than I need for speech recording or for most .mp3 recording in general) and which also appears to be a rather flimsy device, but so far hasn't angered so many consumers with the sound quality as the PMD 660. But hey, it's newer. And there are several digital hard drive recorders out there that are affordable too. Neuros is one of the best looking, and far more features. I think it is the only digital recorder around right now that records to .ogg as a factory preset.
The industry has been resisting the popular demand for a quality portable digital recorder for a few years now. So our options remain very limited at this time. We can only hope that the powers that be will realize it is in the best interests of the industry to have quality recording hardware easily accessible to any singer, musician, or whoever; however skilled, and it will create a culture of musical technology that will only enhance and increase the industry. I can now buy a one-use disposable digital videorecorder at the drug store, and yet I cannot get a decent stereo mp3 recorder even at most music stores. That is outrageous.
Added a few days later>> I have finally decided that I am fed up with the quality of all "professional" 2-track digital recorders. Until somebody creates one something like this pmd 660 but with quality design and hardware, I am going to use consumer hardware. I just purchased an iriver IFP 895, and just recorded my first meeting with it. Since I have a decent mixer to run sound out of, I got a really good recording. The main reason I was originally buying this overpriced Marantz POS was that I could use compact flash media cards. But since not even Marantz seems to percieve the advantage to using CF cards is that you can remove them, and since the design of their recorder is designed so that you screw the flimsy CF door shut, well, they just don't get it. I am going to use a higher quality, but far smaller "consumer grade" recorder, for less than a third of the price. And if I don't have the option of removing the media, at least the recorder itself is nice and small.
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