Independent Horizon Films

At IHF, we are very impressed with this piece of equipment. Guiding Finn was the first film where we relied entirely on the PMD660 to record our audio...and we weren't disappointed. Consistency and quality, in terms of audio recording, has always been difficult for us to achieve in the past. Although obtaining a high quality, consistent level of sound continues to challenge us, the PMD660 is a great asset and as we learn more about it, our sound quality will benifit!

The fact that it records everything to a CF card (we use a 2gb card) and it has a USB port makes transferring the audio to our computer a snap. The quality is great and the recorder is surprisingly easy to use. If I was to point out one downfall of this recorder it has to be the battery life. It comes with an AC adapter, which is handy, but if you are outside and away from electrical power, it will run on four AA batteries. The manual says that the PMD660 will "run for hours" on batteries, but we found that to be far from true. It generally sucks the juice out of our energizers pretty fast causing us to have a constantly supply of AA batteries at hand. The price tag on this thing is also a pretty big hit...about $500 (that's a lot of loot to us lowly Indie filmmakers) but this is one of the most affordable models on the market. If you have the means, I recommend picking one up.

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This PMD recorder is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and records on Compact Flash media cards. It will store more than 36 hours of mono on a single card. If audio quality is your key requirement, you can get over an hour of pristine, uncompressed, 16-bit .wav files.the PMD660 even has its own USB port. XLR inputs, phantom power, built-in mics and more!