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Marantz PMD661 is smaller, newer than PMD660

November 19, 2008 By Brad Linder 5 Comments


The Marantz PMD660 is one of the more popular handheld, professional digital audio recorders due to the fact that it has two XLR inputs, unlike many other recorders in the same price range. But after a few years on the market, the PMD660 was starting to look a bit stale, especially after companies like Sony, M-Audio, Zoom, Edirol, and Olympus kept pushing out smaller, cheaper recorders. Sure, you could get the cheaper, smaller Marantz PMD620 recorder, but that doesn’t have XLR inputs.

Enter the PMD661. This recorder is the next generation of the PMD660. The new recorder is about 30% thinner than its predecessor, and uses SDHC cards up to 32GB instead of Compact Flash. It still has two XLR jacks, as well as a stereo 1/8 inch line input, a quarter inch headphone jack, and unbalanced RCA line outputs.

The PMD661 sports an OLED display and a new button layout with a nice big circular menu in the middle of the device with playback controls.

The recorder will set you back £523 in the UK. No word on US pricing yet, but that’s not surprising since there’s very little information available on the official product page at the moment.

via Sound On Sound

thanks Graham!

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About me

Brad Linder is editor of mobile tech blog Liliputing.com, host of the LPX Show podcast, and an independent journalist whose work has appeared on public radio and the web.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    November 19, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    You forgot to mention an important upgrade: it’s now 24/96 capable. That was really one of the biggest drawbacks of the 660 more recently. That said, looks like they kept those crappy meters, oh well.

    Reply
  2. tapeleg says

    November 21, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    Now, this is what I have been talking about. Maybe it will review well, and I can finally have my setup for world domina… I mean, “field recording.”

    Reply
  3. Chris says

    November 21, 2008 at 10:24 pm

    This might be just the thing for some of my live event recordings… we’ve been using m-audio microtracks but haven’t been happy with them of late. Any idea if it will be able to accept line level (+4DbU) on it’s XLR inputs, I can always add a couple of pads, but i’d rather not.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous says

    December 16, 2008 at 3:57 pm

    12/16/08: Just got an email from SweetWater.com notifying me that this in in stock for $599.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous says

    October 28, 2009 at 9:35 pm

    Got 2 free balanced microphone free. http://www.martelelectronics.com/Marantz-PMD661.html They also had them instock. Super Deal.

    Reply

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