Audio Media - September 2008 - (Page 24) This time, it’s for real. JERRY IBBOTSON’s in love. It’s cute, pocket-sized, and battery powered; and happily knocks aside preconceptions about portable recorders. Introducing, Marantz’s baby… T his has been a struggle. Not writing this review as such, but trying not to give the game away at the start. Normally when product testing for Audio Media I waffle on a bit at the start about something slightly surreal, talk about the hardware for a few paragraphs and use a couple of real-life test examples to prove my point. Then I wrap up with a summary of its good and bad points. Easy. But right now I’m finding that sticking to that formula is really hard because I have to confess right away: I love this little machine. The PMD is sitting on the desk next to my laptop, with a USB lead dangling out of its bottom. Earlier today I downloaded a recording I made at York railway station last week, while waiting for a train to whisk me to the Develop conference in Brighton. A steam train had pulled in at the platform opposite for a few minutes, before huffing and puffing its way up the east coast mainline. I’d had the tucked in my bag and used it to record the engine moving off. At first I wished they’d used a numbered level dial but soon found that it works just fine as it is. That first recording proved a few things. Firstly, that having a recording from an easy-to-pocket machine is better than no recording at all. Call me paranoid, but I wouldn’t have wanted to whip out my Edirol R and a gun mic on a tube train in . Secondly, that the smallest Marantz of all is very, very good. I played the recording back over and over, once I’d got back to base, and prepared myself for a wall of pre amp noise. But the hiss that I thought was coming from the two microphones mounted on the two corners of the machine turned out to be from the mechanics of the tube train itself! Since then we’ve lost track of what the has been used for. I’ve taken it home on a number of occasions and recorded things like rain hitting the windscreen of my car and thunder overheard. Adam grabbed it from MARANTZ PMD 620 Portable Recorder I llogical, But I t Works The recording shouldn’t have been any good; at least not according to the logic that I followed when buying a rather expensive four channel location recorder last year. Something the size of a cigarette packet with two diddy built in mics shouldn’t work. But it did. I’ve been playing the train recording back at increasing volume levels just to enjoy the sound. The only wobbly moments are when I can be heard running in front of a trainspotter and when another anorak clad gentlemen makes a strange noise in response to the train’s horn being sounded. The machine arrived in my office in the hands of David Morbey and Mark Perrins of Marantz’s UK operation. They wanted to pick my brains about portable recorders, and we also spent quite a while reminiscing about Marantz machines of old, like the portable cassette recorder I used as a radio journalism student eighteen years ago. At the end of the day they dropped the on to the table, both of them grinning rather excitedly. I smiled nicely and fiddled with it for a while but secretly (sorry chaps) I wasn’t holding out much hope. Pre-amp hiss is always the bug bear of small portable recorders and I still shudder at the thought of a certain bit of kit I briefly owned a couple of years ago (no names…). my desk during a downpour one afternoon and got some excellent material just by leaving it by an open window. We also had to provide some wind roar for a video game we’re working on and used the Marantz to record some very ‘natural’ sounding effects. Then there was the Chinook. I’ve mentioned this in my review of the Rode NTG- gun mic elsewhere in this issue. An RAF Chinook helicopter landed at the army base near us and we were lucky enough to be allowed in to record it taking off. The main recording was done on our R Pro with the Rode inside a Rycote Softie windshield. The Marantz came along for the ride. Okay, so once the giant blades were whirring it suffered massively from the downdraft but it did capture some very useful material of the turbine engines firing up. There was no distortion and no hiss. It’s just brilliant. THE REVIEWER JERRY IBBOTSEN runs Media Mill, a York-based audio production company started in 2000 that specialises in sound for video games. Prior to this, Jerry was a BBC journalist for ten years, ending his spell with the Beeb as a reporter and newsreader at Radio One Newsbeat. A week later, I was heading down to London for a couple of meetings and took the Marantz with me. While rattling down the central line in a fairly empty carriage I slipped it out of my bag and flicked it on. I’m not sure what the etiquette is on London Underground, particularly in the current climate, but the ’s so small it looks like an MP player. I figured I wouldn’t draw attention to myself and I was right. I’d already used the simple Menu to set it up to record as a kHz, -bit stereo WAV file (it’s a shame it can’t manage kHz) and turned the auto gain control off. Manual recording levels are set via two small buttons on one side of the chassis. These correspond to the level meters on the brightly backlit LCD screen and to the db levels that appear as numbers on the same display. London Underground Etiquette As I’ve started this review at the end I may as well wrap up with the kind of technical stuff I normally start with. The has a nice metallic front to its body and easy to use buttons that perform the key functions. It can use either the built in mics or can take an external one via a minijack input, and records as either MP or .WAV. It comes with an SD card and uses just two AA batteries. I don’t think we’ve changed ours since we got the device a month ago. My only gripe is that the headphone socket is a bit close to those inbuilt microphones. Who would use it? The list starts with people doing podcasts, then moves on to multi-media journalists (newspaper hacks who these days have to provide audio material as well). Actually, scratch that: anyone who wants a good quality audio recorder that can slip into a pocket. That includes me then. ∫ I N F O R MAT I O N We End At The B eginning… £ GB£270.00 (exc.VAT) A D&M Installation, Kingsbridge House, Padbury Oaks, Logford, Middlesex, UB7 0EH T +44 (0) 1753 680023 F +44 (0) 1753 686020 W www.marantz.com 24 AUDIO MEDIA SEPTEMBER 2008 http://www.marantz.com
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