Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Digital Recorder with XLR Inputs

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

Mostly used this model for recording birdsong in the tropics. Overall, it did very well- handled extremely humid conditions, occasionally getting wet, and lots of physical abuse (used daily for several months in Asia).

However, there were a few things that were annoying:

1) slow to boot up especially if you have a lot of recordings on the card, and occasionally it would fail to start at all- you get stuck on the "Loading" screen. When this happens you have to pull all the batteries out to get it to restart.

2) Selecting your settings is cumbersome. Not a problem if you aren't changing these around too much.

3) Eats batteries. Not sure if this was just unique to my unit or what- but batteries don't last long at all. Carry lots of extra AA, especially if you are going somewhere remote.

4) Speaker is weak- almost always had to hook up an external speaker for playback purposes.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

I teach at a University where we own 6 of these recorders. Students check them out to do Field Recording Projects (NPR-type news stories, etc.). 3 of them are currently "broken" where they lock up and only say "Loading" on the screen. Its not the Compact Flash card, because the cards work in other recorders. Its something to do with the card reader interface. I'm pretty much done with the 660 and now I'm looking for something that can withstand constant use by students and will hold up.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

I've had this for 3 years and use it to capture wild sound or to mic 2 people during video takes.

Battery issues - does not have ability to charge batteries while in case, NiCad AA batteries don't last too long - perhaps an hour at best.

Power switch is flimsy

Consumer grade battery charger jack - very fragile when using AC or external battery power (easily disconnected, breakable)

Love phantom power, XLR jacks

Menu settings are not intuitive - have to figure it out every time - need cheat sheet to expedite but battery door on back makes it difficult to attach..

Left/Right gain knob is not easy to use unless you want to gang L+R. Bad for non stereo uses.

Presets for internal/external mic and compression sometimes change in storage - must manually check correct settings each time.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

This unit met our needs for ENG recording. We also plan to use it for the main audio capture device on set for independent film production. It is simple to use, has no moving parts and does a very nice job.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

I am currently using this product to record public meetings.

It's compact and small enough to almost fit in a purse.

At first it was confusing to use but now I'm excited to use it!

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

I've been using this product for some freelance work. It's been reliable and sturdy. No complaints.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

It feels like the door may fall off for the media card and the whole thing is light weight plastic....but this recorder is a very nice unit.

I don't own this but use it every now and then at the college when doing video production in the field.

The manual is the worst thing in the world and dosen't really say how to use the product however after a few minutes I figured it all out on my own.

I thought the preamps could be a little better as it is just enough to run my Shure SM57 but hey, it's a lower budget unit.

Overall it has some great features and I really enjoy the layout. I would like to see the media door strengthened but overall I would buy one for myself if I had the market for a field recorder.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

No complaints at all. Durable, flexible, and professional. One trick: make sure you include batteries even if you don't plan to use as a portable recorder. If someone pulls the power on you while recording, you lose the current file.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

all the basic functions and then a few extra. very easy to learn to use. transfer is quick.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

Because of problems recording audio with my GL2, I purchased this for recording mic audio. It's light, no real moving parts, and the quality is acceptable. More time than necessary was spent setting it up, but its functionality with 3 different presets makes it quick to adapt to almost any situation.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

We use this for interviews and recording natural sound for use in journalism projects. There are a lot of features that we probably will never use but overall it is easy to use. I have had issues with the headphone jack becoming loose and shorting out. You can still record but you cannot hear what you are recording. This has happened about three different times on various Marantz's that we have owned. Try and be careful with the headphone jack but otherwise this thing is built like a tank.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

This is perfect to use with a boom for those longer day shoots where you need to be on the move. I have also created a VO kit using this as the primary recording device that I mail to locations. It has already paid for itself in the 2 months that I have had it.

I was hesitant to purchase the package with wired remote control but it has turned out to be an extreme time saver. I definitely recommend purchasing the remote if you plan on being in a high pace situation.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

We use these to record lectures and break-out session presentations for our clients. The PMD600 has performed very well in a wide range of situations. The controls are intuitive for the most part and setup is quick. The pre-sets make routine recordings very easy to manage. We switched to these from MiniDisc and direct to CD recorders for the reliability of Compact Flash and the direct file transfer capabilities of the MP3 and WAV file formats. Our only gripe is that the unit is made of plastic and in hard wearing situations, it may not hold up too well. But other than that we have no complaints.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

Got this unit several years ago, and have used it extensively in field recordings (radio journalism). Higly reliable and easy to use.

Two minor complaints: the lid over the Flash card socket needs to be handled gently, since it seems to be easily breakable (thus rendering the unit useless).
Furthermore, for those in a hurry (as we reporters sometimes are) i recommend using a portable card reader to transfer files; doing it straight from the unit is considerably slower.

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

Very intuitive for an experienced user. Newbies could get a little confused with menu settings. For simple voice recording, just set it and forget it. For musical recording, a portable pre-amp is definitely needed. Hard to get rid of the hum due to the noise floor levels of the internal preamps-amps. Bit of a shame really, because with a 4 gig card, you can record four full hours of stereo at 44.1. You won't record the next live performance Grammy winner with this unit, but you will get a very good, high quality recording.

Expertise: Advanced in sound engineering.

Problems Encountered: Other than the aforementioned hum, the only other problem I find is in battery life. However, since a lot of my work is critical, I just use the included power supply. Saves a lot of headaches.

Previous Equivalent Item Owned: Alesis DAT, Cassette Decks

Items I Recommend: Definitely an Audio-Technica AT822 or AT825 Stereo Mic

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

Purchased these (4) to replace audio cassette recorders that are used record the meetings of a middle sized city. This unit is excellent for that purpose, once the menus are set up they are pretty user friendly, a lot better than the old cassette recorder and you don't have to finalize like a CD. We found that we can get a years worth of meetings on a 2gb card even though they are downloaded after each weekly meeting.We use them with two Shure EZB/O boundary mics, makes a nice system.

Expertise: Advanced

Problems Encountered: We purchased 4 units and have had them about 18 months. One unit had to be send in for repair just out of the warranty period ($250.00) because it would no longer recognize the Compact Flash card

Previous Equivalent Item Owned: Audio cassette recorder, CD recorder

Items I Recommend: Shure EZB/O boundary mic

Comments about Marantz PMD660 - Portable Compact Flash Recorder:

I purchased this machine to make CDs of choir rehearsals todistribute to our choir. Excellent for this purpose - thesound quality and ability to go direct to computer mean thisproduces far superior results much more easily than tape. Ialso found it extremely useful to record long meetings. MP3is more than adequate for both of these applications, farsuperior to cassette tape sound, and the huge capacity on abasic 1-2 GB card means many sessions can be recorded beforedownloading. Quality with internal mic is good enough that Iusually don't bother setting up the external one any more.Also used uncompressed to convert vinyl to CD, works great.

Problems Encountered: Expected minimal software, none included. Menu system iscumbersome, typical of devices like digital cameras and VCRsthat have too few keys to control many functions inexperienced user could get lost and record nothing. Itwould be much more convenient to have some switches youcould set and see how they were set. Too easy to forget youwere set for mono, or for internal vs external mic, whichrequire menu selections (the display DOES tell you).Advantage is that it won't accept changes during recording,which can be a pain in the neck if you need to - it can takea couple of minutes to stop, cycle through the menu to whatyou want to change, and start again. Dynamic range limitedfor music performance, would benefit from audio levelcompression or a different machine.

Previous Equivalent Items Owned: A variety of cassette tape and reel-to-reel recorders.

Items I Recommend: Audio-technica AT825, ACID music studio