picked on up from B&H photo last week ($399 shipped).
first impressions..., as I have not used it much.
- not nearly as intuitive. I actually need to refer to the manual, A LOT.
- decently built. plastic, but thick plastic.
- 5v 1amp DC input, or 6xAA batteries...or USB power (limited in the boards use when powered by USB, its not full featured).
- on board omni's sound fine as "room mics" to mix w/the rest of the inputs.
- preamps on chan 5/6 where the only 48v phantom option exists are not as terrible as I expected. Not dead quiet, but very usable. On par w/the stock preamps on any of the decks we use normally, I'd say.
- Definitely not a "field deck" that I'd want in a pile w/other gear. In certain situations where you can lay it on a table and "do it right", it would kick ass. But dont think something like this is going to be a suitable replacement for any 4 or 8 channel field recorder.
I have a lot more goofin' to do with this. I purchased it for the band so that we could multi-track our rehearsals...start getting good w/this board and then produce our own demo...as nicely as we can. So far, so good. We'll get it rockin next week once we plug everything into it.