Marantz solid state recorder

[Alec Coupe]

Since there wasn't any mention of solid state recorders in Jessica's
summary, I thought I should share my recent experiences of using a
Marantz PMD 670 solid state recorder for fieldwork in Nagaland, NE
India. I think that overall it's the best recording medium I've ever
used (in the past I've used cassette recorders and a minidisc). It's got
no moving parts, so it tolerates a fair bit of abuse. It's about the
same size as a Sony ECM5000-EV cassette recorder, has an internal
speaker and weighs in at 1.3kg (plus a bit more for the AC adapter). I
used it to record onto a 1GB compact flash card in wav format at a
sampling frequency of 48KHz. Mono recording at 48KHz gives almost 3
hours of recording time, more than ample if you have a laptop handy.
When the card is full the wav files can be dragged and dropped on your
hard disk via a USB port. Backups of data can be easily made by burning
the wav files to CDs. Another good feature is the balanced XLR mic
inputs. I used an AKG C420 head-worn mic for recording word lists and
narratives of speakers who weren't freaked out by it, and a Sony ECM 44B
lapel mic for those uncomfortable about wearing the AKG. The Marantz
supplies 48v phantom power if your mic needs it.

 

On the negative side, it's expensive at around $1600 plus $450 for a 1GB
compact flash card, but I saw 1GB cards for sale in Hong Kong last week
for AUD $250, so at least the price of memory seems to be coming down
fairly rapidly. I paid a bit extra ($100) for a rechargeable
nickel-cadmium battery, which has 4-5 hours of life between charges. The
Marantz comes supplied with a battery holder that takes x8 AA batteries.
This gives 6 hours of playback according to the manual. I never needed
to use AA batteries as I was able to charge the Ni-Cd battery between
recording and transcribing sessions or else run it on AC power. 

 

There is one irritating design feature: to charge the Ni-Cd battery, the
unit has to be turned on and then off again. Power outages happen every
couple of hours in Nagaland during the northern winter, so every time
the power went off, the Marantz stopped charging. Also, AC power isn't
routed via the battery (presumably to allow the safe use of
non-rechargeable alkaline batteries), so running it on mains power won't
simultaneously recharge the Ni-Cd battery. 

 

The only potential disadvantage of using the Marantz is that you are
very dependent on a laptop to store and access the wav files once your
CF card is full. If you don't have an expensive stack of cards, then it
might be prudent to take along some other kind of backup device that
will allow storage/access. The Marantz user's manual is available online
at

 

http://www.d-mpro.com/users/folder.asp?FolderID=1582&Tab=Accessories
 
 
Dr Alec Coupe
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow
Linguistics Program
La Trobe University
Bundoora, Melbourne 3086
Australia
 
Tel. +61 3 9479-3297
Fax +61 3 9479-1520
 
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