to be honest, i think people are being pretty cautious about making statements about this box just yet. there aren't a whole lot of sources out, and yours is the only comparison disc that i know of being done. but i don't care about comparison downloads. also, 24bit is still not all that common, and those of us who do listen to 24bit recordings, I imagine, are a bit more circumspect in making broad statements about the box until we've heard it a bit more. from the two sources I have heard, I was only at 1 of the shows, so it's impossible to get a real frame of reference. both sources were km140s>sd722 (mule 2-20-05 and wilco 2-23-05) so marc you can stop reading now.
i found the 722 to be very laid back and musical, with a big, rounded bottom end. i have always found that the real benefit of 24bit recordings is in tightening up the lower frequencies. this seems to accomplish that well. the 140s can get loose in the low end and mule is certainly a bass-heavy tape, but there is no sign of bloated bass. it sounds very accurate (though i wasn't at the show) and round. not very warm though. from my memory of the wilco show, the 722 sounds very accurate. It sounds very much like what i remember at the show. sound was good that night, but not great, and you can hear the limitations of the mix in the "tape". the dynamic range advantage from working in 24 bit is more evident in the wilco tape, but that's not too surprising given the types of bands and the venues (wilco was at the 930 which is a very good sounding room). I don't know if any of my rambling makes any sense at all.
overall, i think it sounds pretty neutral, a little bit less detailed than a v3, and with less presence, but just as, if not more musical. but this is just an impression off of two different bands in different rooms. the only constant here is the microphone.
EDIT: I ran the 722 for wilco while michael ran it for mule. I have a few issues with the design, but overall it's a very easy box to use. I don't particularly like the metering. however, i may have been in the wrong metering mode (not sure if it was peak or the basic one). but i found myself running the levels too conservatively because I was concerned about overs. there are 10 LEDs between -40 and -20 but only 3 between -12 and over. that doesn't make *any* sense to me. midway through the first wilco song when i was well into the red, i backed the levels off and peaked at around -10 to -8 the rest of the show. well, the first half of the first track sounds markedly better than the next few songs till i got it dialed in more. but i still wish i had pushed the box more to take advantage of more of the dyanmic range. it's too bad the meters seem to be more pretty than they are useful.
EDIT again: i'm sure the metering issue becomes easier to deal with once you've run the box a few times and get a feel for how it runs.
