Ok, so Sony's image was dented quite a bit because of that whole DRM software/rootkit business but to compensate for all the sorrow, they have designed something that looks to be a cross-breed between the Terminator and some BattleStar Galactica-kind of brain surgery tool. That's never a bad thing, now is it?

So what is this PCM-D1 exactly? What does it do? Well, it's your typical high-end sound recorder - more or less comparable to M-Audio's MT and Edirol's R-1 (the Cantar-X is of course the impeccable lord and master here) - but this time, they managed to squeeze in a 4GB flashmem chip. Teh ult1m4t3 nan0 k1ll3r?

Nah, seriously, the PCM-D1 does come with a rather extensive list of features. It can naturally record into linear PCM (WAV) format (max 24bit, 96KHz - don't mix this up with kbps ), there's a MemoryStick Pro expansion slot, it's USB2.0-compatible and comes with a standard tripod. As for the sound-technical details, the PCM-D1 offers (adjustable) stereo microphones, an additional input for external microphones (stereo also supported), headphone-out, line-in & out (analog) as well as optical-out. There are several quality settings to choose from, ranging from 16-bit, 22.05KHz to formerly-mentioned 24-bit/96KHz. Signals up to 30KHz can be picked up, sensitivity was labeled "approximately -32dB/Pa 1kHz" (I have no idea what that means, I'll be honest with you). Several measurements have been taken to reduce any form of static or other annoying sounds - supposedly, the circuit board was split into a digital and an analog section, some special kind of carbon ink was used to prevent the casing from going all noisy and that kind of stuff. Even the (rather small) LCD screen uses some noise-reducing technology. That's great.

The PCM-D1 can run for about 4 hours on a double pair of "3 nickel hydrogen batteries" (whatever those are) but you can also switch to regular AC power.

Now as you might have suspected from the very start... this thing is gigantic in terms of size: 193 x 72 x 32.7mm at a weight of 525gram. But look at all those cool gauges and meters... beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so if you're a sci-fi fan this could end up on top of your Christmas wishing list.

We're not sure if we've interpreted the Babelfish Translation correctly, but expect this thing to hit Japanese markets as of November 21... at a whopping 200k Japanese Yen. That's 1430 Euro, or 1690 US Dollar. Money can buy lotsa cool stuff.

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