"Ralph Paonessa" wrote:
> Any comments on the Marantz PMD660
> vs. Sony MZ-RH10 for bird recording?
Many of the first PMD660 units sold in USA were faulty. The units for
sale today are presumed OK. This leads to a lot of contradictory
reports, ie. one person posts that the Sennheiser ME66's output level
consistently overloads the 660's preamp, while another writes that the
ME66 works great. Several who initially reported problems later posted
to say the repairs Marantz made fixed the problems, and now the 660
works well.
I like the PMD660's pro features, like XLR connectors and built-in
phantom power, 2 second pre-roll buffer, and automatic closing of the
file being recorded if the battery runs out. I also like the ease and
speed of file transfer from Compactflash to computer.
I like the HiMD's smaller price, small size, and good battery life
(although not nearly as good as the non-HiMD models). I also like the
choice of using ATRAC SP for high quality compressed recordings. (The
PMD660's MP3 version is low bit rate, hence of poor quality). The
HiMD disc is probably durable (we don't have enough experience with
them yet to say for sure), but at $7 each, they are not as attractive
as an archival medium as the original MD discs.
The proof is in the pudding. Many reputable dealers will give you at
least 7 days to try out the recorders with your mic. Why not order
them both, then keep the recorder that works best for you?
Please let us know which you choose.
--oryoki
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|