“When IEC’s Strasbourg office first contacted me, the PMD580 was not yet commercially available,” explains Pascal Papin, Sales and Marketing Director of DMi France. “But we shared the advance product information we had with Eric Hezarifend, Business Sales Engineer, IEC, and agreed that the PMD580 specifications fitted the Council of Europe’s requirements perfectly. We had to work really fast to supply IEC within very short deadlines, but due to the fantastic responsiveness of both our IEC’s and own teams, we were able to deliver the first PMD580s on time.”

The PMD570 and PMD580 are professional 1U rackmount Compact Flash™ memory card recorder / players, providing non-linear recording, playback and editing, and USB file transfer using the highly convenient and secure CF media. Operation is selectable between linear PCM and MP3 formats – providing .WAV and MP3 file types. Bit rates are selectable between 32 and 320 kbps for MP3 recording. Record start and stop times can be scheduled, and a pre-record memory buffer enables recording to be activated at the start of an event. The integrated time and date generator automatically stamps all sessions. Both models feature and RS232 control.

The PMD580 additionally provides fully fledged network capabilities, with Ethernet LAN and USB connectivity. Drag and drop file transfer and network remote control, via the PC and Mac compatible web-based GUI, allows users to set menu parameters, schedule recording events, and transfer and archive audio files. Also included are balanced analogue and digital AES/EBU I/Os, and selectable 24-bit recording.

The PMD570 and PMD580 architecture was chosen by the Council of Europe to provide robust non linear digital acquisition, playback and storage capabilities, network functionality, ease of operation, and a wide range of audio compression settings.

The PMD570 and PMD580s are deployed throughout the Council of Europe to provide recording of Council of Europe meetings, Parliamentary Assembly sessions, European Court of Human Rights hearings, congress meetings, and meetings conducted either in dedicated meeting and conference rooms or in the hemicycle. The council hosts approximately 3,000 meetings a year among 60 meeting rooms and the hemicycle. Recordings are multilingual, often trilingual, comprising the speaker’s native language plus French and English. Once recorded, the information is transmitted via the network to the transcription department, after which recordings are archived and preserved as part of the Council of Europe’s ‘Audio Heritage’. Audio is recorded in MP3 format for conferences and transcriptions, and as PCM / .WAV for press release and archival purposes.

The Council of Europe has reported its satisfaction with the Marantz PMD based architecture, and plans to extend this recording management solution to other offices.

Solidstate recorders is a product category in which Marantz Professional has led the field since the introduction of its first model in 1999. The company currently boasts a coherent product range comprising seven models, including handheld, portable and rackmount variants.

About the Council of Europe
“The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members…”
Art. 1 of the Statute of the Council of Europe
Founded on the 5th of May 1949, the Council of Europe seeks to develop throughout Europe common and democratic principles based on the European Convention on Human Rights and other reference texts on the protection of individuals. http://www.coe.int

About IEC
IEC has almost 500 permanent collaborators based in 16 regional offices in France, one in Guyana, four in Spain, three in Italy, one in Finland, one in the USA, and 85 relay points throughout the world. The IEC Professional Media group is quoted on Eurolist, SA, with a capital of €4,759,308. The IEC Group specialises in the sectors of audio-visual integration, engineering, event broadcasting services, and professional audio-visual product distribution. http://www.iec.eu

About DMi
DMi D&M Installation, a division D&M Europe, is dedicated to the distribution and support of products from all of D&M’s brands to the commercial AV and custom install markets. DMi offers a comprehensive portfolio of products from DENON and Marantz ranges, alongside Escient digital music servers and Boston Acoustics’ wall, ceiling and outdoor speakers.

About D&M Holdings Inc.
D&M Holdings Inc. is a global operating company providing worldwide management and distribution platforms for premium consumer, automotive, commercial and professional audio and video businesses including Denon®, Marantz®, McIntosh® Laboratory, Boston Acoustics®, Snell Acoustics, Escient®, Calrec Audio, Denon DJ, Allen & Heath, D&M Professional and D&M Premium Sound Solutions.  Our technologies improve the quality of any audio and visual experience. All product and brand names with a trademark symbol are trademarks or registered trademarks of D&M Holdings, Inc. or its subsidiaries. For more information visit www.dm-holdings.com.

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