Marantz Professional's PMD660 Compact Digital Recorder Shines in Teaching Role at Broward Community College
(Marantz | Posted 2006-11-12)
The PMD660 Compact Digital Recorder, from Marantz Professional, has been proving itself a flexible and reliable digital audio recorder in the field for applications such as broadcasting, ENG and education. However, Robert Buford, an Associate Professor of Speech at the Communications Department of Broward Community College in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, has discovered yet another use for this innovative and remarkable unit. Buford has been using the PMD660 to teach podcasting to the Speech Department faculty at Broward Community College, and is preparing to do the same for students in the near future. The Marantz Professional PMD660 is perfectly suited for the task: highly portable, full-featured, and with easy one-touch digital recording to cost-effective Compact Flash media cards, capable of producing uncompressed WAV files at 44.1 or 48 kHz, and high-quality MP3 files in mono (at 64 kbps) or in stereo (at 128 kbps).
Podcasting isn't the market the PMD660 was created for but Professor Buford's use of it for that purpose underscores the PMD660's versatility. "I had never heard of the unit until I encountered it in a Sweetwater Music supply catalog as I was looking for iPods and laptops to set up the podcasting teaching program for our faculty members," Buford recalls. "The 660 looked perfect -- small, lightweight and I was able to use a high-quality microphone because of the 660's dual XLR jacks, which really helps enhance the sound quality." Buford, who has been helping faculty and students learn the latest in communications systems and devices for nearly seven years at the College, says the PMD660 is effective, easy to use and very intuitive. "I take it to class, on site to projects, and I've used it to record members of the faculty for their poetry readings, which encourages them to try out the podcasting program," he explains. "The 660 is so simple to use they learn it in no time. Then they take their recordings and transfer them to laptop, edit them in GarageBand or some other simple audio editing program, and they're podcasting. We're just about to get into video podcasting and I'm going to look for a way to keep on using the PMD660 for that, because we've gotten used to a high degree of quality in our podcast sound."
About the Marantz PMD660
The rugged PMD660 is a solid-state recorder with easy one-touch digital recording to cost-effective Compact Flash media cards. Uncompressed WAV files can be recorded at 44.1 or 48 kHz, and high quality MP3 files can be recorded in mono (at 64 kbps) or in stereo (at 128 kbps). Using a standard 1-GB Compact Flash card, the PMD660 can record over 1 hour stereo and 3 hours mono of uncompressed audio, over 17 hours of stereo MP3 (at 64 mbps) and almost 36 hours of monaural MP3 (at 64 mbps) audio.
Designed for the most demanding field applications, the PMD660 features 2 built-in stereo condenser mics with Automatic Level Control (ALC), 2 XLR microphone connections with 48 volt phantom power, stereo line I/O and can operate for up to 4 hours on 4 standard AA batteries. Due to its solid-state design, the PMD660 has virtually no moving parts, and is therefore dramatically more reliable than cassette, DAT, or other tape/disc formats.
