Kiss goodbye to DAT: Marantz PMD660 field recorder

Product Review: Page (1) of 2 - 05/14/08

Kiss goodbye to DAT: Marantz PMD660 field recorder The PMD660 strikes an admirable balance between functionally, price point and compact use By Mike Jones

It appears 'solid-state' has become the buzzword of modern production with an increasing number cameras moving to tapeless image acquisition. But the quieter revolution taking place in parallel is the one to solid-state audio recording.

For two decades Digital Audio Tape (DAT) has been the standard medium for recording audio for film production. Bulky DAT recorders slung round the necks of boom-swinging sound recordists have long been a staple of dual-system recording processes where the audio is recorded independent of the camera and picture.

There's no denying the quality of DAT, with a standard 48k 16bit sample rate and bit depth, nor its physically robust structure (tape is safe, it sits happily on the shelf for years on end, and short of running it near a magnet, its data is almost impossible to corrupt).

But there are downsides and inefficiencies with DAT; the most notable being its wholly linear nature. Transfer to post production is effectively a real-time dubbing process with no non-linear access to takes and individual recordings.

It's here that solid-state recording solutions have long been seen as an obvious evolution. What was required for DAT to be replaced was for storage capacity of memory cards to be comparable to tape and for costs of the memory cards themselves to fall in price. Strangely, these two factors - functional capacity and inexpensive price - were arrived at some time ago and yet it's only now that we're seeing solid-state recorders begin to truly replace DAT for professional production. Old habits die hard and it seems location recordists and sound designers took a long time to be convinced to hang up their trusty DAT machines. But the charge is certainly on now with professional solid-state recorders cropping up all over. Among these is a solution from long-standing audio hardware manufacturer, Marantz. The hugely popular PMD660 is designed to be a light-weight and efficient recorder suitable for both dual-system video production or on its own as a field recorder for sound design or radio.

The PMD660 is certainly lightweight and reasonably compact, offering a pleasant alternative to the often times bulk of DAT machines. But despite this, the PMD660 is very solidly put together with a robust construction. There are no extruding parts, knobs or switches and so nothing to catch or break off in the event of a fall. That said, a drop from height onto a hard surface won't be a good thing. A neck strap allows the PMD660 to be worn in the traditional way, leaving hands free for boom and mic operation. The unit would certainly benefit from some sort of padded sleeve or case; not just to protect against drops, but also wind, rain, and dust.

The PMD660 is a two-channel system with a pair of balanced XLR inputs for main microphone recording. 48 volt phantom power can be delivered to the XLR ports for driving condenser-based mics such hyper-cardioid shot gun microphones. The unit also provides 3.5mm (1/8 ) minijack sockets for stereo line-in recording. This is very useful for using the PDM660 in conjunction with a mixer. As outputs, the unit is fitted with a 3.5mm stereo line-out and headphone, mic-level, output for monitoring.

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