Alright here is my first somewhat limited review of this deck
Box includes the deck, a Kingston 8 Gb SD card, a USB cable and a pair of shorty 1/4 inch to XLR female breakout cables - plus a printed copy of the Quick Start guide in several languages.
Booting the deck from a USB battery brings up a screen to select Bus power or storage - clicking the "wheel" to select bus power brings -
The "Home" screen with icons for
Bus power
Playback or record icon
Time of day
Remaining record time on the card
Meter Display - Six channels and the stereo mixdown channel
- each channel shows highlighted if armed and displays the input settings
On the front panel there is a gain knob for each of the 6 inputs plus the transport controls - the transport controls are numbered 1-6 and do double duty when using the menu to shortcut to each channels options. There is also a Menu button and a Slate button. Also the typical flimsy bars on each side to protect the front face controls I guess doing double duty as a place to put a strap.
The left side has XLR/combo inputs for 1/2, a 1/8th inch mini stereo input for 1/2, 1/4 inch TRS inputs for 5/6, the slot for the SD card with a rubber protector and the Camera input and output.
The right side has the power switch - slide down for power on/off, engage up to hold (not a fan of the hold function being part of the power switch but that seems to be the trend), the USB port, XLR/combo inputs for 3/4, the 1/8th inch mini TRS line out and headphone output with a recessed wheel for headphone volume.
The back of the unit has a pretty sturdy flip down door with a locking tab on it for loading the 4 AA batteries.
Lets say you are running six channels - 2 stereo sets of mics and a SBD feed - you could accomplish it a couple of ways but for the sake of discussion you are putting 2 XLRs in the left side of the deck for 1/2 and 2 XLR in the right side for 3/4 and taking a 1/4 stereo pair out of the sbd into the left side of the deck. Four inputs on the left and 2 on the right - if you use stubby XLRs as many of us do you want to make sure the exit angle doesn't impede the use of the controls or jacks located above the inputs.
ALSO NOTE - The TRS inputs 5/6 pass phantom power so be sure to turn off phantom in the menu on these channels if connecting to a soundboard or any other external device!
The Menus -
Clicking the menu button brings up the first of 14 numbered menu pages - I'll just hit the highlights - it's all in the quick start guide.
1 Input -
Gain range - L,M,H,H+
Sel - Line, Mic, External (have to dig in to find out what this is)
Delay - selectable from 1 - 300 ms
Phase - flips 180
2 Mic Power -
Select Phantom power per channel - 48 or 24 V - and plug in power for the 1/2 mini input - didn't test it to see what it provides.
3 Rec Assign -
choose the mode for each channel - assign stereo to groups or mono to each - assign channels to the mix or dual level record settings
4 Level control -
Limiter, auto and Low cut settings - I won't ever use any of these - never have and never will so I can't comment - film guys that are the target of this recorder will probably want to know about the limiter - it seems to have a couple of settings that may be useful to those who want it - you can link it to stereo pairs for example
5 Mixer -
Assign M/S to the mix, level and Pan controls
6 Output
Assign source for the Camera out, Monitor out (you can choose from any individual channel, stereo group, a M/S channel or the Mix)
Line out level
Camera out level
7 Record Setting
Format - BWF 24/16, WAV 24/16,
Sample Rate - 44.1, 48, 96kHz
Encryption
8 Slate settings
9 File
Folder, Name type, reset count
10 Gang control
Three groups to which you can assign any input and control the group with the lowest number input knob in the group. I like this A LOT!
Not just pairs although it could be. You could assign 1,4 and 6 to group One controlled by the gain knob for channel 1 and 2,3 and 5 to group Two controlled by the gain knob for channel 2. Or any combination of the 6 channels split between 3 groups controlled by the lowest number gain knob in the group. To my knowledge this feature is unprecedented in a deck in this price range.
11 Meter setting
Peak hold - hold (keeps the peak indicator on the highest input for the entire recording session, hold, 10 sec, 2 sec, 1 sec or OFF.
Trim Min - if I get this right it sets the minimum of the meters to -40 dB for the MIN setting - the other setting is OFF. Not super useful on the tiny meter display.
12 Media
Browse
Format - gives you a "are you sure" message so that helps those of us who drink when we tape...
13 Power Controls
Battery type
Auto power save
Backlight dimmer
Contrast
14 System
Initialize - restores to out of box settings
Date and time
Date format
Information - takes you to a set of 3 screens displaying all the project and unit info - Project info like format and title - card info like files, size and available space - system info like firmware version and battery capacity
All told I'm pretty impressed with what they packed in this box for the price.
Taking it out for a spin on Friday night to record Dustbowl Revival at a small club down the street from me. Probably run the 706 mic in for the first set and the Aerco line in for the second to get a comparison of the preamps.
To answer the last couple of questions that I can -
Pause - yes you can hit the pause button while recording and it just pauses - hitting the record button again resumes the recording where it left off.
Specs - I don't read too much into specs. What's a few dB of noise when you are talking in the -120 range?
Display - the display is white on black not the other way around. I like it. I had a Marantz 620 with a similar scheme and it was really easy to read in the dark. I have bad eyesight and it really helps. The size of some of the info on the screen is so small as to be almost useless. The record time remaining number would be a similar size as a 6 point font in a .doc. Luckily the running record time is twice as big.
Camera output gain - it is controlled in the menu settings on page 6 under Output controls. One of my favorite features of the DR60d is the separate wheels to control line out, camera out and headphone out but to be honest once I found the sweet spot I never adjusted it again. The trend seems to be software controls to save space instead of physical switches.
EDIT - potentially inflammatory language removed