Topic: Marantz 660 lesson learned

[Colin Liston]

Lesson Learned:  The 660 loses the recorded info if it loses power while still recording. 

Well, I was trying to change out my batteries on the 660 during the Allman brothers set at Wanee, using the trick of taking only 2 batteries out at a time, keeping two in and taking two out,  the unit was still recording, but all  the batteries fell out at once. 

I lost the first hour of the Brothers set 

[Chuck]

The 671 allows you to plug in an external battery pack and keep running. Doesn't the 660 allow for that?

[Kush]

The 671 allows for hot swapping of the batteries while still recording? Wow!
The more I hear about these (671), the more I like them.

[Chuck]

The 671 allows for hot swapping of the batteries while still recording? Wow!
The more I hear about these (671), the more I like them.

Yeah, you can swap them out if there is another battery source in place. So you can swap out the internals if there is an external attached etc... I've done it and specifically tested it and it works flawlessly...

[AdamZ]

Lesson Learned:  The 660 loses the recorded info if it loses power while still recording. 

Well, I was trying to change out my batteries on the 660 during the Allman brothers set at Wanee, using the trick of taking only 2 batteries out at a time, keeping two in and taking two out,  the unit was still recording, but all  the batteries fell out at once. 

I lost the first hour of the Brothers set 

What batts were you using that you had to switch them out after an hour? How long does the 660 run? I was thinking of getting one very soon.
Z

[phr]

I wonder what really happened there.  I've had my 660 run out of power many times and it's always closed the file gracefully.  Anyway if you still have that cf card and haven't overwritten it, you can probably recover the file with a file recovery utility.  It's very unlikely that the recording is completely lost except for maybe the last few seconds. 

I'm skeptical of that hot swapping trick because of the voltage difference between a charged and near-dead pair of batteries, causing a high drain on the charged cells if you're using rechargeables.  But, I also find that with 2500 mah cells I can record 7+ hours nonstop on one set of cells.  That should be enough for most shows (at least w/o phantom power which might drain the batts faster).

[Nick's Picks]

fwiw, the operating voltage of the 660 is different when running on internal cells. 
while it wants 5v for outboard, it runs on under 2v for internal power, or there abouts.

I understand your concern though.  I guess someone needs to run down some AAs and then try it out.

[Colin Liston]

I wonder what really happened there.  I've had my 660 run out of power many times and it's always closed the file gracefully.  Anyway if you still have that cf card and haven't overwritten it, you can probably recover the file with a file recovery utility.  It's very unlikely that the recording is completely lost except for maybe the last few seconds. 

Oops...too late.  All I know is the all batteries fell out at once.  Maybe I'll try it at home and see what it does.
Thanks for the tip though

[terrapinj]

I wonder what really happened there.  I've had my 660 run out of power many times and it's always closed the file gracefully.  Anyway if you still have that cf card and haven't overwritten it, you can probably recover the file with a file recovery utility.  It's very unlikely that the recording is completely lost except for maybe the last few seconds. 

I'm skeptical of that hot swapping trick because of the voltage difference between a charged and near-dead pair of batteries, causing a high drain on the charged cells if you're using rechargeables.  But, I also find that with 2500 mah cells I can record 7+ hours nonstop on one set of cells.  That should be enough for most shows (at least w/o phantom power which might drain the batts faster).

i would suspect that the unit detects when the voltage is about to drop low enough to no longer operate the unit and saves everything. in his case all the batteries fell out leaving no power at all for the unit to save, and presumbly the unit had no way of knowing it should be preparing to save the file for a power down.

[BobW]

does it loose data or simply fudge-up the wav ?
there are tools, we can rebuild it !

Put the CF in a reader on the computer and see what you can see...

[napa]

So if you lose power during recording, you lose it all?

[pmonk66]

No - I ran out of battery juice during a set and the pmd660 saved all audio uo to the point it shut off

[phr]

I think terrapinj has figured it out, the recorder normally notices when the batteries are getting low, and uses some of the remaining juice to shut itself down cleanly so the file is saved properly.  But if you yank the batteries with no warning whatsoever, the shutdown is unclean.  The audio (except for maybe the last few sample which are in ram) still has been written to the flash card but the file pointers haven't been updated.  It's sort of like when your PC crashes with files open.  The info is still there on the disk but you can't access it the normal way.  You have to use file recovery utilities to get at it.  I remember one from the old days called Disk Doctor but maybe someone else can make more up-to-date recommendations.