Sony PCM-D1 ... anyone?

[Bhang]

I have been looking for a good high quality ultra portable recorder and am curious how this thing is in action. It looks fantastic. Does anyone have some comments they could share. How are the mics and pre's?
Bhang

[radiated]

That indeed looks very nice. But of course Sony has skipped spdif input.... So it's basically a bye-bye, as that is not very flexible at all.

[Bixby]

Originally Posted by Bhang

I have been looking for a good high quality ultra portable recorder...

I think one of the Sound Devices machines might be your best bet.

[David Spearritt]

Originally Posted by Bhang

I have been looking for a good high quality ultra portable recorder and am curious how this thing is in action. It looks fantastic. Does anyone have some comments they could share. How are the mics and pre's?
Bhang

I think it looks terrible. It has some breathtaking design errors including the laughable microphone arrangement. Sound from the left hits the right microphone first and vice versa. What a complete joke. If the rest of the machine is up to this standard then you're wasting your money.

[T.RayBullard]

look at the sound devices 722, or 744t,

marantz pmd 660/671

fostex fr-2

sonosax minir2



www.oade.com modifies these units with different components to sculpt the sound the user is after(mods the marantz and fostex)

[Plush]

Originally Posted by David Spearritt

I think it looks terrible. It has some breathtaking design errors including the laughable microphone arrangement. Sound from the left hits the right microphone first and vice versa. What a complete joke. If the rest of the machine is up to this standard then you're wasting your money.

Come on, now--that's an XY stereo mic--obviously the RT mic is supposed to be wired to the LFT. channel and vice versa. Err, ahem--it better be! Otherwise, it's a joke.

What IS a joke is the price, the 1/8th inch connector mic and line inputs and the miserably skimpy running time on the flash and magic stick media. $2000.00 for this?

It does look really cool though!

[David Spearritt]

Originally Posted by Plush

Come on, now--that's an XY stereo mic--obviously the RT mic is supposed to be wired to the LFT. channel and vice versa.

Let's look at it in detail. The mic physically on the right is the left channel and the mic physically on the left is the right channel due to the way they are pointing. We are all agreed.

Now lets say you are a little quark capable of surfing the sound wave in towards the unit, for a sound wave coming from the left. Guess which mic you hit first, the RIGHT channel mic, admittedly a bit off axis, but you hit it. Imagine what this does to sound arriving around the image centre from mid left to mid right, where its not as off axis. The image will be disastrous. The mics are arranged correctly for directivity, but are reversed for time of arrival.

This is the reason "crossed" cardioids are always crossed! Sony have made a huge blunder. At least RODE got it right on the NT4.

[Bhang]

I really appreciate all the input. For what I use my portable rig for, I don't want to be lugging around an additional mic. I was hoping that someone might have used this machine and would have some feedback. I used to love Sony gear, but in the last 4-5 years they have made some serious garbage. The short record time and lack of SPDIF don't bother me in the least. It does have usb2 so that's all I need. But if the pre's are not kick ass and the mic isn't all that than this would definitely be a pass..
Once again, thanks for all of the comments. One reason I love this board.

Bhang