Marantz PMD-700

A professional field DAT recorder that carried balanced XLR inputs, AES/EBU digital I/O, and a two-and-a-half-grand price tag into the brief, expensive window when tape still ruled location sound.

Overview

The PMD-700 was Marantz's bid for the professional field-recording market at the moment DAT was displacing analog tape on location shoots, and the company positioned it as the smallest and lightest fully professional DAT machine available. That claim came straight from dealer catalog copy of the era, where the PMD-700 was listed at a manufacturer's list price of $2,500.00 — roughly two and a half times what a consumer-oriented portable DAT deck commanded at the time. The pitch was aimed squarely at ENG crews, and the phrase "more and more ENG pros are choosing the clean sound of DAT for field recording" appears in the same distributor literature, which tells you exactly who Marantz thought was buying.

What set the PMD-700 apart from the consumer portables was its I/O. Balanced XLR mic and line inputs on a machine this size were the whole point; unbalanced mini-jack inputs were fine for hobbyists but useless on a film or news set where long cable runs and low-impedance professional microphones were the norm. Analog outputs were RCA phono. Digital connections were AES/EBU in and out — the professional standard, not the consumer S/PDIF that lesser decks settled for. One period review noted that a competing deck offered digital inputs and outputs but lacked AES/EBU connections entirely, which makes the Marantz's inclusion of the pro-standard interface a meaningful differentiator rather than a checkbox. Recording-Engineer (March 1992, p.57) covered the PMD-700 in a field-recorder roundup and singled out that AES/EBU capability alongside the balanced analog connections.

The converter architecture was serious for the day. According to the distributor documentation, the PMD-700 used 1-bit, 256x oversampling A/D and 1-bit, 64x oversampling D/A converters, yielding a signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range of better than 85 dB with total harmonic distortion of 0.018%. Those are respectable numbers for early-1990s DAT — not state-of-the-art studio converter performance, but well beyond what the format's critics expected from a battery-powered field unit. Analog recording sampled at 48 kHz; digital recording was selectable among 48, 44.1, and 32 kHz, and playback (analog or digital) was available at any of those three rates. That 32 kHz position mattered because it doubled recording time, a real consideration when you were feeding the machine from a bag on a shoot and didn't want to swap tape mid-take.

Perhaps the most consequential detail for working engineers: the PMD-700 had no SCMS. The Serial Copy Management System was the consumer-protection scheme that prevented making digital copies of digital copies, and its absence on this machine meant multigenerational digital clones could be made freely. For post-production workflows that needed to duplicate a master DAT for editing or archive, that was not a nicety — it was the reason to buy the professional deck instead of the consumer one. The same Recording-Engineer review (March 1992, p.57) confirmed the machine shipped without SCMS implemented.

The feature set reads like a checklist written by someone who had actually worked in the field. A key-hold switch prevented accidental triggering of the front-panel controls — the kind of thing that only occurs to you after a transport button gets bumped inside a bag during a take. Absolute time display let editors locate material precisely. A backlit LCD stayed readable in dim conditions. A built-in auto-limiter caught transient peaks before they clipped the converter. The machine shipped complete: rechargeable battery pack, AC adaptor, carry case with strap, wired remote control, and adaptor cables for both audio and digital inputs were all included in the box. That completeness was itself a selling point at $2,500 — competing pro decks often nickel-and-dimed buyers on batteries and remotes.

The physical story is the one that dates the machine most clearly. Marantz and its dealers made much of the PMD-700 being the smallest and lightest fully professional DAT recorder available, and the context makes clear why that mattered: the competing Sony TCD-D10PROII weighed in at 4 lbs. 7 oz. even with its internal battery pack, per the same dealer literature. A field recorder that lives in a shoulder bag all day is judged on grams, and Marantz was staking its claim on being the lighter, more compact option for crews who were already carrying enough gear.

Reception in the trade press treated the PMD-700 as a credible professional tool rather than a repackaged consumer deck, which was the central question for any DAT machine wearing a pro badge in 1992. The format itself was young enough that Recording-Engineer (March 1992, p.57) framed its coverage around the novelty of the technology — the review ran under a "See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Record Me" banner and opened by noting that the column had discussed Marantz's CD recorder roughly a year earlier. Marantz, for its part, was being reintroduced to the American market under Philips ownership at the time, a corporate backstory that hung over the whole product line and gave buyers a reason to wonder how committed the brand would be to the professional category.

That question of commitment is worth sitting with, because the PMD-700 occupies an awkward place in the collector's imagination. It is a genuinely professional machine from a brand better known for home receivers and separates, built during a narrow window when DAT looked like the future of field recording. Within a few years, hard-disk and solid-state recorders would make the whole category obsolete, and DAT tape itself would become a maintenance headache as transports aged and heads wore. The PMD-700's value today rests on its completeness — a working example with the original battery pack, remote, and carry case is a far more useful object than a bare deck — and on the fact that its AES/EBU I/O and balanced inputs make it a legitimate piece of professional kit rather than a curiosity. Prices on the secondary market have not approached the original $2,500 list, and buyers should assume any unit will need attention to its transport and battery before it records reliably. The documentation available here does not establish production years, serial ranges, or common failure points, so anyone shopping should verify condition and completeness directly rather than relying on the model's reputation.

What the PMD-700 represents, more than any single specification, is a snapshot of a specific professional moment: the point at which digital tape became practical for location work, and manufacturers raced to build the smallest, most complete, most professionally-connected machine that would fit in a sound bag. Marantz's answer was expensive, well-equipped, and thoughtfully accessorized. Whether it was the best DAT deck of its era is a question the surviving documentation can't settle — but it was unmistakably built for the people who needed it.

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Marantz PMD-700

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