Sony is expanding its line of portable professional audio recorders with the new PCM-M10, a palm-sized compact unit, designed to be a musician’s tool for composing music or recording practice sessions and performances, and even use as a personal music player.

The recorder joins Sony’s PCM-D1 and PCM-D50 models to form a family of flexible and rugged portable field recorders for professional sound applications, including live sound, house of worship, theatrical and broadcast journalism.

“The PCM-M10 is ideal for budget-conscious professionals who still need high-quality sound capabilities,” said Karl Kussmaul, senior product manager for professional audio at Sony Electronics. “Musicians will especially love its range of user-friendly features that can help inspire them to new levels of creativity.”

The PCM-M10 is designed to faithfully capture even the most subtle nuances of live performances and events. It shares several features and design elements with the PCM-D1 and PCM-D50, including the same rugged construction and cool design.

The new recorder is 96 kHz/24-bit capable with electret condenser stereo microphones, 4 GB of internal flash memory and a microSD/Memory Stick Micro (M2) slot.

Key features of the PCM-M10 recorder include a built-in speaker, cross-memory recording, digital pitch control, digital limiter, low-cut filter, track mark functions, a 5-second pre-recording buffer and A-B repeat capability.

It is supplied with Sound Forge Audio Studio Recorder Edition software.

The new recorder also includes a USB high-speed port for simple uploading and downloading of native .WAV or .MP3 format recorded files to and from Windows PC or Macintosh computers.

It offers durable metal construction and long battery life using conventional AA alkaline batteries.

The PCM-M10 portable recorder is planned to be available in October, at a suggested list price of $399. It is being displayed at the Sony booth (#207) at the 2009 Summer NAMM show in Nashville.

Sony Pro Audio Website