Checking in, hopefully not checking out.
I just got a Sony M10 delivered last night, probably will be getting a whole lot less use on the DR2d now.
Unfortunately, came away with a couple bad recordings with the DR2d lately. First time was an issue with an attenuator cable I made to use with the DR2d. I should know better -- something I whipped up last minute to get me through that I never built again correctly or replaced (a kluge of lots of resistors in series and parallel that were all the values I had to work with, wrapped up in electrical tape). Worked fine for several shows, but then got moved around in my bag and shorted, screwing up the recording.
Next, just most recently at a GBA show, I was getting everything going and it seemed like I'd lower my levels on the littlebox preamp but the meters never showed the levels going down. (I had line-in from my V3 on another set of mics, and mc950>LB> mic-in for the other channels, no attenuator cable since it was toast). I assumed this was due to overload, so started pulling cables at the show and trying to figure out how to rearrange things, then decided I didn't want to also screw up the Milab>V3>D50 recording, so I gave up and put everything back together on the DR2d. After all that, I don't hear any distortion/overloading, but I don't know what the deal was with the levels and metering.
Oh well, in both instances I still had perfect recordings from my Milabs>V3>D50, so no huge harm.
I still think the DR2d is a nice little recorder for 4ch work, but especially if you want to use it for 4ch, a quality set of attenuators is a must IME. For 2ch work, line-in from an external preamp with a +6dbu max input isn't too hard to manage, just keep your external preamp turned down a bit.