OK, here are some impressions after working with the R-44 for over 10 days in a film shoot, int and ext.
+ menu is easy and quick to use, kept simple, all you need. File and take numbering is relatively fast to use and really useful for film shoots.
+ display is nice, though hard to read in plain sunlight. I like the menu and display much more than those of Sound Devices recorders and such.
+ using SD cards was the greatest idea! The use is so fast and uncomplicated and silent! Unit can record wthin less than 5 seconds after powering up.
+ Headphone output (using a Sennheiser HD 25 which is closed and the loudest headphones I know) seems really good and loud enough.
- BIGGEST bummer was battery life. 4 hours my a**. I almost always used a preamp so I recorded one channel @ 48/24 without phantom and on first preamp level (-2 dB). Recording time with decent batteries never even got close to 4 hours, so I mainly powered it using the adaptor. I imagine that record 4 channels with phantom will last you less than an hour for a set of batteries. So start thinking about alternative powering options (I will power it from my portable mixer that has a big NP1 battery attached). The manual's note saying the used AA batteries because they can be bought everywhere seems like a bit of a joke in that way, because if I really wanna go record somewhere in the jungle for two weeks I will have to pack a whole bag of AAs, which is not so practical.
- preamps sounded a bit noisy when cranked up to -44 dB. Might be the mics, too (Oktava MK012). Still tolerable though.
- Not really a minus to me, but if you're going to use them, the internal mics are damn noisy! Unusable to my ears! More of a gimmick there, as well as the internal speakers that are pretty low level.
IMPROVEMENT SUGGESTIONS
: Routing shortcuts would be nice (see Sound Devices Recorders), e.g. press stop and play at the same time to toggle number recording tracks.
: Also one thing that could be fixed: Why can't I record 1x Stereo and 1 mono or 1x Stereo and 2xmono?
: As said by others before, more monitoring options would be nice.
I have yet to use my R-44 for music recording, but so far, even with the little flaws mentioned above, I must say I love it! For the price it's definitely unbeatable!