Dr. Ribon,
Welcome to the group!
Your doubts about the PMD670 are well founded. This machine was
introduced in late 2002. It offered improvements over the Sony and
Marantz cassette tape machines, but had several shortcomings.
As you mentioned, the PMD670 consumes AA batteries very quickly, and
if a recording is in progress when the batteries die, the recording is
lost. One solution is a 12V external power source, which adds to the
weight and complexity of the recording setup. Newer digital recorders
use power more sparingly and are more graceful when the power happens
to run down to a critical point.
At 100 mW output, the PMD670's built-in speaker is weaker than the
speakers in the Sony and Marantz cassette machines. The solution is
an external battery-powered speaker of some sort. This is an issue
common to all digital recorders. Many new recorders have no speaker
at all.
The PMD670 manual suggests that the recorder creates an entry in the
Edit Decision List for each file created. If the EDL is erased or
corrupted, the file can't be played. This is a guess, but I think
when you try to copy a file from computer to PC, the EDL needs to be
updated somehow before the file can be played back. This doesn't
sound like a convenient procedure!
Among more recently-designed field recorders, the Fostex FR-2LE has a
lot to recommend it. It's smaller, lighter and less expensive than
the Marantz PMD670 and PMD671, but provides XLR mic inputs and 48V
phantom power. The FR-2LE has a long lasting rechargeable battery option.
Here's a link to the Fostex web site
http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/pro_products/fr2le.shtml
--oryoki
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