ive ran about 100 dats in the last few days on 4x r500 and a 3700
looking at the files im seeing occasional issues that are hard to nail down, either card or recorder issues dropping the same 148 samples on multiple R500>pmd661 setups. microtrack II acted flaky with some channel swap/channel drop action.... but thats why i only do redundant.
most are going well considering they are over 20 years old. i only watch error counters, not ABS time . 4 of the 5 decks im running stay in the low single digits, the other one seems to be permanently in the 0010-0050 range and still transfers bit-accurately, no worse than the others when i compare. once in a great while a head clogs up but i think ive used a cleaning tape maybe once or twice in years
the R500s have a swab-type cleaning arm that cleans the head every 10-20 hours on powerup