Thread: Marantz PMD-671
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Mike Rivers
 
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Scott Chapin wrote:
Anyone used one of these yet? I was going to use it for video work and I
heard the preamps on the PMD-670 had a lot to be desired. They say the new
preampss are nice, but are they?


No personal experience, but the October issue of Electronic Musician
appeared in my mailbox today and there was a picture of one on the
cover, together with a number of other portable recorders, for a survey
article. There's bad news and potentially good (but untested) news
about the preamps. The reviewer said:

"I wanted to love the unit, but the mic preamps were disappointing.
Their high self0noise made any recording that I gathered preactially
unusable for professional applicaitons without using lowpass filtering
to remove the hiss. I was using an MKH40 which is one of the quietest
mics you can buy. It's a great machine for someone who already owns a
high-suality portable mic pre. Othewise, this machine would be stellar
if [Marantz] would improve this one problem. Since then [the reviewer]
got his wish: according to Marantz, recent firmware and hardware
updates have addressed such concerns."

They liked the Edirol R4 a lot, and this is the one I've been attracted
to. The reviewer made the point that I often have - that with a
built-in hard disk, you can keep a month's worth of work on board
without having to unload it or drop in a new and fairly expensive flash
memory card.

Based on this article (and I would never make a purchase of something
like this without the opportunity to try it before committing) the R4
at $1900 sounds like a much better deal than the PMD671 at $1200. On
the other hand, $700 can buy a few large flash memory cards (that you
then have to manage). But you get four tracks with the R4.