When Sony launches a new product locally, the company never cease to take that opportunity to introduce us to a few rare products on top of its major product announcement and this is what I’ve personally think is a really nice product to take a first look, meet the PCM-D100, a Hi-Res audio voice recorder that records brilliant audio with its two position microphones.
On first impressions, the PCM-D100 looks like one of those handy zoom mics that you’ll find on the market, the PCM-D100 clearly isn’t just meant for recording interviews but also meant for film making voiceovers and digital music recording. The PCM-D100’s two position microphones remind us of those on its MV1, which is a pair of high performance condensed microphonesthat has staggering maximum input of 128dB SPL and frequency response of 2oHZ-20KHz, which will mean it is sensitive enough to pickup sound like a needle dropping on to the floor faraway,
if you think that pair of microphones aren’t good enough, Sony does let you connect an external microphone with its 3.5mm microphone port, there’s also a Line-In and Audio-Out port, which will let you record external audio sources and monitor recording sound respectively.
The PCM-D100 isn’t powered by a lithium battery but instead, it uses 4 standard AA battery which Sony doesn’t include rechargeable ones out of the box, the company estimates 12 hours of battery life on continuous recording. While the Hi-Res Audio moniker may sound gimmicky to most, the PCM-D100 does record file formats that not every handy recorder could support, those file formats include FLAC, PCM Linear, DSD and the usual MP3, WMA, WAV and AAC-LC file formats.
As a not so advanced recording guy, I have to say that Sony has made the user interface of the PCM-D100 pretty easy to navigate, its dot matrix LCD display shows all the details that you’ll need to know, its menus and settings are also easy to navigate around that I don’t even need to read the manual to know how to use it, there’s a dial on the side that also lets you control the Microphone’s sensitivity. While this remains as first impressions, we’ve requested a review unit from Sony Malaysia and will be trying out on our upcoming videos as soon as we receive it.
Since the product comes with the Hi-Res Audio moniker, you are not going to expect an affordable price tag, the PCM-D100 retails at RM2,499 which is a huge premium over some other flagship handy recorders such as the Zoom H6n, however when you consider the recording capabilities and a line-in audio port for recording sound from other audio devices, the price is no longer a big deal if you are serious about sound. Stay tuned for a review soon.
