So I had a chat with Sony and also ordered a 2nd unit, which is behaving the same as the 1st one with my optical feeds (ie. wont take 96/24 from all my high end gear). So I finally talked to my tech, who seemed to think that the optical wavelength may be incompatible. However, checking the specs for the D50 confirm that it adheres to the standard (660 nw +/- 30) and an input sensitivity of -27 dbm. We are totally puzzled by this, and also by the fact that the unit did a 48K recording when I fed it a 96K signal that sounds fine! Can the guy who was successfully able to feed 96/24 into the D50 please tell me what unit was used? Thanks!
Another thing: some testing that we did the other day with the Sound Devices 744T has confirmed what I had suspected for quite a while - the 2 stereo outputs are 90 degrees out of phase when playing back from the machine, but not when monitoring thru the unit (either 2 or 4 channels). Although I realize that most people just drag the files to a workstation, this is a serious problem for those of us who want to mix 4 channels externally, and something that SD ought to fix.......
Joe P.