Opinions on Marantz PMD660 as cure for Sony camcorder “hiss”

[Seth Bloombaum]

I do this all the time for event videography where I need a couple more tracks. I’m presently using an HHB pro minidisc unit, should work fine with the Marantz.

Occasionaly you see posts from people saying they have drift over 15 or 30 minutes – I’ve never experienced this. Of course both Video/sound and minidisc are coming in digitally, the minidisc typically via S/PDIF, and I’ve had to lock my sound card to the MD clock.

If you’re recording on a CF card you’ll probably not even capture, just file transfer. If there is a gross pitch/time change that probably means that the file header is off, and your mac thinks it’s a 44.1 file instead of 48. There should be a utility for you to fix this if it happens (Soundforge on the PC is what I use).

My typical setup is a stereo pair of mics into the minidisc, short shotgun on the camera for reference audio, sometimes I use it for wild sound, and that leaves a channel open on the camera for maybe a wireless lav.

Then everything into the NLE and rough sync, then slip the audio for final sync and turn off the reference track. I’ve had no problems with 60 minutes of sync. My NLE allows me to move the audio in less than 1-frame increments, which is important for this kind of work (it will allow movement by 1 sample!).

How bad is the audio on your camera?

[Chris Dalrymple]

Thanks. The hiss is common in many of the last generation Sony prosumer camcorders, my TRV-900 among them. It’s only really noticeable in a sit-down interview with a lav. I figure it at 10 kilocycles but when I filter it out I lose the highs on the voice. Leave it as is and I cringe at the playback in a theater situation. I can send the unit to a service that will disable the offending internal pre-amp but then I would need an external pre-amp to replace it. That makes it a $500-600 option for a five year-old camera. I also considered the minidisc workaround but was under the impression that I needed a second tabletop unit for better playback into my Mac. Is this not the case? Am open to any and all suggestions.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Not that familiar with the TRV-900.

A buddy has the larger of the Marantz CF recorders – he likes it, works fine for him. Of course he has to always travel with his laptop and dump off his cards once or twice a day.

If that’s a problem then Minidisc is nice in that discs are cheap. But I spent about $1400 on the HHB, it has XLR in and phantom, digital in and out, etc. It’s the $2-300 consumer MD that you have to buy a tabletop MD to get digital out.

But if I were to purchase today, it would probably be one of the Marantz CF recorders or the R-4 4-channel from Edirol.

[Chris Dalrymple]

So I could output in real time from a low-end portable MD if I used some sort of digitizing tool – i.e. iMic – to convert to an AIFF file?

[Seth Bloombaum]

I suppose so. However that will be a step back in terms of quality, as you’ll take whatever the MD preamps put on disk, play it out through the headphone amp as analog, digitize with a consumer device… You won’t really know the quality until you benchmark it.

Remember, the idea was to get away from consumer quality preamps 🙂 and it would sure be nice to get your sound digital and keep it that way without subsequent conversions. I guess this falls into a “best practices” discussion, but only you can determine if consumer MD digital-analog-digital conversion is sufficient quality and better than what you’re doing. It might not be good enough, I don’t know.

However, you’re asking advice of audio professionals and my knee-jerk reaction is spend more money and get pro quality!

Have you ever tried a beachtek or similar audio interface and a pro lavalier on your TRV-900? The hiss could be coming out of your mic…

[Chris Dalrymple]

So there’s only a headphone jack on most low-end MD models? Too bad.
I’m using a Beachtek adapter and a Sony ECM-77B lav with my camera. The hiss is well-known to owners of the VX-1000, VX-2000, TRV-900, PD-150 etc. Bear in mind not all but many. I discovered too late that sometimes Sony actually fixes them if they’re still under warranty. I am using an older Mac G-4 for editing. Apparently only the G-5 has an optical-digital input which may be a moot point as Sony does not like Macs.