Hey D, yeah the microdot breakout is very nicely done and super clean. That actually may be the biggest immediate "end-result" improvement as my aging DIY microdot to mini-plug 'Y' adapters were beginning to develop intermittencies and need re-soldering again. I'll snap a closeup of the in-line female dot terminations on it which I think Chris fashioned from panel-mount connectors when I get a chance. Those aren't ugly at all!
weroflu, now that this is has been streamlined, I'm hoping to do some testing to determine how significant the improvement will be moving from the existing 4 channel surround array to 5 or 6 channels to see it it's worth the effort to do that regularly. I've done a few rough tests of that but nothing conclusive or in optimal recording situations. Those additional channels will allow me to use a rear-facing stereo pair for audience and hall ambience, instead of a single rear-facing mic (that's the 5th channel, which I would already have included if I could've done so easily). I'm thinking the "extra" 6th channel may be useful for either a figure-8, positioned to be coincident with the omni center channel which will then from a M/S pair (using one of the new Naiant low-voltage figure 8's I have on order with Jon which should ship soon), or a single highly directional hyper/supercardioid which I can point independently of the main 5 channel baffled omni array. A third option may be using the 5th channel for a second figure-8 coincident with the existing single rear-facing baffled omni, forming two mirrored forward and rearward facing M/S pairs. I think that's worth a try, and should be an interesting test, but I doubt that's where I end up with this.
I'll do these tests by recording to a second DR2d which will up the available recorded channel count to 8, using one of my 2ch CA-UGLYs for the two additional mics. Although doing that means reverting to needing to sync recordings from 2 separate recorders again, doing so will be much easier this time around since I plan to 'mult' one or two mic channels so they are sent to both recorders. Those identical channels in the file sets will make sync'ing and aligning the filesets much easier with far greater accuracy- potentially with absolutely perfect sample-accurate sync. Plus, by using the IR remote I can start or stop recording on both DR2ds with a single button-press as long as their IR receivers can both "see" the IR remote.