If you have any of the Marantz PMD digital audio recorders, whether you bought it last week or years ago, check the Firmware. I bought mine just a few months ago and was shocked this afternoon to find that the Firmware pre-dates the Internet. Well, almost!
Mine, a PMD620, came with Firmware A1.14. A2.33 came out May 4th, 2009. A2.03 was current in March 2008.
And there are not small problems being corrected by these newer versions of firmware. A2.03 corrected a latency problem where you heard a delayed version of the recording through the headphones. A2.27 came out at the beginning of 2009, and was the first to fix problems with 16 and 32GB SDHC memory cards. And the biggie that I bought it for: record more than 4GB worth of audio, which is just over 6 hours of 44KHz stereo WAV format.
I'm also having trouble with (using A1.14) a recording where the WAV file is the right size, plays properly on the Marantz, but comes up a 0:00 in length on a computer. i.e. - the WAV file header has a zero time value. This probably comes up in one of the many firmware descriptions that talks about corrupt files and the like.
Comments
Memory Cards Matter I wrote an item in the Newbie section about
Memory Cards Matter
I wrote an item in the Newbie section about Memory Cards because my PMD620 continued to fail with the new firmware.
I contacted Marantz Support and they said that Kingston memory cards have been a big problem for their customers, and they strongly recommend only using SanDisk or Lexar. Talking to Kingston Support, they have tested some PMD models, but not the PMD620, so they RMA'ed the 16GB Kingston card, but made no promises that it would work with the PMD620. No matter, as I had planned to sell it, still sealed, on eBay, as the lowest sales price right now is $1 more than I paid locally!
Paid a lot more for the cheapest 16GB SanDisk or Lexar available locally, but it just passed the 20 hour point of my test recording, without a hitch.
Only irony: the SanDisk is Class 2 and the Kingston was Class 4 (faster than Class 2).
Dears, Fact is that after upgrading (upload 3.1 firmware to SD
Dears,
Fact is that after upgrading (upload 3.1 firmware to SD via USB --> accept offer to execute --> wait device within 2 hours to restart, but it didn't happened --> retrieve battery and mount it again) Marantz PMD 620 is not switching on. Pls. advice what to do on this issue.
Thank you in advance!
This doesn't seem to affect all players but certainly a majority
This doesn't seem to affect all players but certainly a majority. The PMD 671 for instance does not have a firmware update listed. Good call on the others though.