As noted in the Media forum I've been testing the R-44 with a basic grade Sandisk 4Gb card, rated class 2 I believe, and even writing 2 stereo files at 24/96 there's no problem as far as I can see. Maybe a longer soak test is required. This helps with the dilemma faced by heavy pro users, namely, that you might not be able to transfer and back up your recordings as fast as you are making them, so you might find that at least temporarily you'll need to archive the original memory cards. And if low cost ones will do, then that's not such a big deal. ($6AU per gigabyte for 8GB Sandisk, here, at best).