PMD 560 With the exclusive Virtual Track mode feature, the Marantz PMD560 allows you to make your edits and playlists right on the recorder, allowing you to create up to 99 virtual tracks and internal playlists of audio segments. Need to webcast part of a meeting to your sales team? Want to play a few interview segments during your presentation? What about podcasting the six best songs from the holiday concert? Editing is easy with virtual tracks. To operate the Virtual Track mode, you simply tell the PMD560 what segments of a file to play, and in what order. It does it without altering the original file in any way, and without using up more storage on card memory. The PMD560 uses Compact Flash (CF) media cards store your data. The advantage of using this technology is it virtually eliminates mechanical hassles of tape recorders and the costs of servicing and maintaining them. Not only that, but CF storage allows you to choose different recording formats, making audio transfers to computers a snap. A single 1 GB flash card can hold up to 36 hours of uninterrupted audio (monaural .mp3 at 64 kbps). For music recording, the same size card can hold more than 17 hours high-quality compressed stereo (.mp3 at 128 kbps). If you need the unmatched quality of uncompressed audio, you can get about 90 hours worth of 16-bit linear PCM audio at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz on the same 1 GB card. To prepare your final product, record in the format you need, and simply move that recording to a computer. In some cases, it's as simple as pulling the CF card from the PMD560 and plugging it into the card reader on your computer. Alternatively, you can use the USB port on the front panel to transfer audio files to a PC. It's already in your format of choice, so once it's in your computer, it's ready to post to the web, burn to a CD, or edit in your favorite editor.