I just got mine today. Some thoughts: the battery indicator does not always show up. Not sure why this is. You can power it through the USB-C, and this did work plugging it into an AC adapter. I had the thing running on some Powerex fully charged AAs for a few hours (didn't time it but I was working for several hours, it was running at 48V phantom). So certainly you'd want a box of AAs in a festival setting or an external battery pack.
I was hoping it would be a better stealth unit. The heavy metal frame seems to be possibly removable, and would leave you with a VERY small and VERY light unit that would be pretty much the be all and end all of all in tiny phantom/pre/recorder units. I did try removing the two long mount screws to see if the metal part would slide off (it looks like it would and should), but it didn't, at least with an amount of force I'd be comfortable with on a brand new piece of gear. There may be more screws under the mounts for the belt loop attachments but again, not comfortable prying these off either. A search of Youtube and Google didn't turn anything up but hopefully someone will work out how we can set this metal frame aside for stealth missions.
I see in the review someone posted that the external bluetooth app would definitely be something you want to augment the tiny and bare bones display on this.
I have the Bluetooth adapter but find no need for it. I am very familiar with 32bit recording having had the F6 and mixpre6II for some years now. The difference in concept is slow to be understood, but recording with these decks is not at all like 24bit or any other deck. I am sure people will disagree or not understand, but that is okay, I record a fair amount and am happy with what i have discovered.
On the F3 in particular, part of the reason for the wave settings showing versus meters is that there is no need for meters and really no need for a screen audio-wise. The concept that is most misunderstood is that you do not set the gain. It is pre-set by the machine and therefore meters are not relevant. This is a true set and forget deck. You do set the faders, or the output, and that is how loud or low your volume will be when you apply to post. But it is just the output volume, the faders, not the gain. So you can change your recording in post if too low or too loud and there is no loss of quality, no difference because it is just output (volume). Input (gain) was set by the deck.
I have come to realize this deck in particular is not like anything else. It is a game changer in approach to recording and especially great where there are unknowns at the start of a show, because it does not matter.
So for the first time when I use this deck, I shut the lighting on the screen off, hit record and am done. The recordings are stellar in terms of the deck. It is still up to me for placement etc., but the deck is flawless and requires no adjusting. I found the bluetooth part unnecessary.
I will say this. If you do not do any post work on your recordings, if you just somehow listen without using a post application, then this is the wrong deck for you. Then you will need to figure out the faders and volume (not the gain as you have no ability to adjust), so you may as well use a different deck, the advantages of this deck are largely nullified.
