PMD660

 I sent mine back
I can't say my experience will also be yours, but here is what happened to me.

I am a professional speech recorder. I record speeches and such to mp3 files with a small computer, and then transcribe them with a word processor. There are a few of us around and traditionally everybody in the field uses Marantz analog hardware. There has been a great excitement about recording to compact flash, and many of the former analog tape users are going over to Marantz' PMD 670 now. Aside from a higher quality recording, you can record continuously for several hours on a large compact flash card. No more flipping the tapes while recording, and so no lost material that you have to search the backup tapes for.

Anyway, for me, having seen the ready availability of the 660, and the price difference, I decided to give one a try. The fact that they had a pair of true balanced mic inputs (XLR) also impressed me, although I typically bypass the mic preamp when recording, using line-in with a higher quality mixer of my own. I found that recording to .mp3 was unfortunately poor quality. I cannot speak to wav recording, which may have been much better. And I found the sound to be distorting and breaking up enough to justify returning the device. I cannot imagine trying to record music to mp3 using the line input with the machine I received.

I know that it is relatively low-priced for the market niche so far, but I purchased it specifically for recording to .mp3, and thereby being able to record hours of speech to compressed files. I am afraid this device was not up to that task. Perhaps if I had recorded to .wav files, it would have made all the difference, but one gigabyte of high quality .wav is somewhere around 40 min - 1 hr, and so one would have to turn off the recorder, change the cf card, and reboot the machine, in the middle of an event that I am being paid to record? Out of the question. I only bought this device for making compressed, uninterrupted recordings.

The hardware is a little flimsy. The compact flash cover is weak and I can imagine breaking it pretty easily. The design clearly intended that you not frequently change out the cf card, but rather leave it in and use the USB connection to transfer your audio files. It has a screwhole for you to permanently screw it shut. So if you don't intend to remove the card very often, this is ideal. Others who like to take the card and manually insert it in a compact flash reader on the computer, well, don't break it! And the line-in connector is a cheap 1/8" stereo plug, just like on your walkman. Over the years, I have seen many of these break through repeated use, and would recommend more or less permanently taping or strapping an adaptor to this device if you use the line-in connector, so you don't have to put any more wear on this weak connector than absolutely necessary, so you might get a couple years' use out of it.

My recommendations would be to either buy the PMD 670 instead, or try something else, like a very small portable computer. I am still having to use the line-in on a very small mini-itx computer. I have to boot up windows every time, but it gets much higher quality recordings at the same recording quality and bitrate settings (44100 stereo, constant bitrate of 128), and I can record to .mp3, .ogg, whatever, and leave the recording program on for a week if I really want.

Other options may include the Edirol R1, which boasts of being able to do 32-bit sampling (far more than I need for speech recording or for most .mp3 recording in general) and which also appears to be a rather flimsy device, but so far hasn't angered so many consumers with the sound quality as the PMD 660. But hey, it's newer. And there are several digital hard drive recorders out there that are affordable too. Neuros is one of the best looking, and far more features. I think it is the only digital recorder around right now that records to .ogg as a factory preset.

The industry has been resisting the popular demand for a quality portable digital recorder for a few years now. So our options remain very limited at this time. We can only hope that the powers that be will realize it is in the best interests of the industry to have quality recording hardware easily accessible to any singer, musician, or whoever; however skilled, and it will create a culture of musical technology that will only enhance and increase the industry. I can now buy a one-use disposable digital videorecorder at the drug store, and yet I cannot get a decent stereo mp3 recorder even at most music stores. That is outrageous.

Added a few days later>> I have finally decided that I am fed up with the quality of all "professional" 2-track digital recorders. Until somebody creates one something like this pmd 660 but with quality design and hardware, I am going to use consumer hardware. I just purchased an iriver IFP 895, and just recorded my first meeting with it. Since I have a decent mixer to run sound out of, I got a really good recording. The main reason I was originally buying this overpriced Marantz POS was that I could use compact flash media cards. But since not even Marantz seems to percieve the advantage to using CF cards is that you can remove them, and since the design of their recorder is designed so that you screw the flimsy CF door shut, well, they just don't get it. I am going to use a higher quality, but far smaller "consumer grade" recorder, for less than a third of the price. And if I don't have the option of removing the media, at least the recorder itself is nice and small.

 Outstanding Quality
I've had my PMD 660 for several weeks now, using it to record an audio CD, dialog for a video, and nature sounds. My 2GB flash card captures about five hours of mono audio in 48MhZ 16-bit WAV files. Can't imagine recording to .mp3 as has been mentioned. I will try it out, though to see if the quality is degraded.

Sound quality is absolutely crystal clear. The device is a snap to operate and lightweight. Our boom operator could manage both the recorder and the mic with no trouble.