An update of sorts. I recorded about four hours of content yesterday on one set of batteries. A number of lectures at Texas Linuxfest. I ran the MM-1 + MR-1000 combo on the first 7 lectures. At the end of which, the MR-1000 battery icon had just jumped to show half power and the MM-1s LED still looked green (hard to tell since I'm red/green deficient). Not wanting to risk it being too close to the 4 hour spec of the MM-1 with 48V phantom enabled, I reconfigured with fresh batteries in the MR-1000 and dropping the MM-1's off the rig since I was short 4x AAs to make it happen. Less than an hour into recording on just the korg, the battery icon jumped to the same half icon. So it looks like I might have been able to record the entire thing on one set of batteries with the MM-1's (but I didn't want to risk it with 45 minute afternoon lectures). Where 2.5 hours on freshly charged NiMH AAs is pushing it for the MR-1000 by itself. It could be that recording at 24/48 is less of a draw than 5.6 DSD. But I'm quite happy as I was hoping to crest 3 hours, and it looks like I can crest 4 hours with room to spare. Per set of batteries (2400mAh NiMH in the Korg, 2100mAh NiMH in the MM-1's).
I had intended to bring regular AAs, but forgot so I wasn't able to keep using the MM-1's. Well I could have, but didn't want to risk it(virgin territory). Plus I wanted to compare the two configurations side by side in a similar context. Not much different, it does look like the dynamic range is a bit different. I'm not sure in favor of which, but loud peaks on the Korg only are not quite as unruly as they are on the combo, but the limiter sucks so you have to play it safe. I was kind of surpised the relatively high gain on the Avenson STO-2's didn't seem to worsen the relatively high noise floor associated with said mics. I probably should have run the gain even hotter, I was hard limiting -12dB on applause, it would have been nice to see that closer to -5dB. The low samplerate plus high amp (12dB) in post left a waveform with a DC offset that seemed to drift more than expected. Than might have been seen had I recorded in DSD and converted. Not of much consequence for the spoken word in a noisy hall with a target 32kbps MP3 output. But still not very pretty to look at.