Nomad also has digital preamps with 1db incrementing, and you can hear the "steps". The thing is, with a nomad, you have a nice and smooth fader, and a bulletproof and natural sounding limiter. In my opinion, f8 faders are useless for field recording. If Input is too hot , you can only fade down an already badly distorted signal. Plus, the "0" position is at like 80% of the knob's course. So if you want to keep gain low and fader high, you only have a 12db headroom on 20% of an already very small knob. Bottom line, you have to "mix" with the trim knob, and live with the staircase effect. Which is totally fine at this price point, but with the clicking issue, it's not so fine.
Get a denecke phantom power supply, "mix" with the trim knob when you have to, do it while to avoiding dialogues so you won't hear the 1db steps too much, and keep a safe track at a lower level "clean" from any trim manipulation a with the dual channel feature.
An small Denecke or PSC phantom power supply won't make that much difference in a sound bag. I mean, the F8 is the first of it's kind in terms of features and size. Are we already used to a recorder being this small we can't accept an external PPS in our bag?
I hope a firmware upgrade could fix this, but I doubt it. Maybe they could change the fader knob pattern and allow the F8 to record post-fader ISO tracks, but then again, the way the digital processing chain is built, I doubt it.
For me it's case closed. I've found a workaround that works for me. I'll try to post some pics of my rig when possible.