There's been a big price drop on the PCM-D100 at our favorite online shopping giant.
As of this writing, May 4 2017, that online shipping giant would appear to be Amazon, which has the PCM-D100 selling for US$742.
The only problem with Amazon USA is that they won't ship outside the USA. And while B&H will ship internationally, their price is currently $775. I live in Japan, and while the unit is sold here for a somewhat decent price, I don't want a unit that has a Japanese UI which cannot be switched to English. From what I've read, D100's sold in Japan are firmware locked to Japanese, disallowing English, which is totally nuts for a recorder in that price category.
It's now almost half way into 2017. You'd think that the street price of the D100 would have dropped below $700 by now.
Anyway...
I read through every single post in this thread, but unfortunately there wasn't very much specific talk about noise floor using the internal mics. I would really like to hear some high resolution samples that demonstrate how the 100dB setting and other settings of the D100 affect noise floor for both quiet and normal recordings. In many of the samples I've found online, I have no idea what the settings were on the D100, so I don't know if those samples are exhibit the lowest possible noise or not. For example, I have a TASCAM iM2 30-pin mic connected to an older gen iPod Touch, and the noise floor seems to be on par with D100 samples I am finding online -- but again, I don't know what the gain setting was on those D100 samples to make an accurate comparison. Anyway, when comparing noise floor of my TASCAM iM2 with the D100 samples, I am finding that the noise of the D100 is more "hissy" (like cassette tape hiss) compared to my iM2 noise, which lacks high frequency hiss although lower frequency noise is present. That could be due to the fact that the D100 internal mics pic up higher frequencies better. Even so, I've heard some D100 voice recordings that were rather hard to listen to because the spoken S's are rather too strong, and I can also hear pops and smacks of the speaker's mouth a bit too much.
My interest in having better D100 samples boils down to my interest in knowing if the expensive D100 is going to give me better sound using its internal mics than my super-cheap-in-comparison TASCAM iM2 + iPod solution. I know the "theoretical" answers, but I seek some better D100 samples to know for sure, complete with settings of the D100 used (including Gain) to make those sample recordings. I usually make recordings of live performances, in rooms small and large, sometimes when an amplified audio system is used and sometimes with no audio system. So my intent for using a D100 would be in that kind of audio environment, where you don't really know what to expect from the event you are recording, and were you cannot have the recorder close to the performers (I usually am in the audience or off to the side).
Another thing that surprisingly has not been talking about in this thread (or even in the 25 page older thread) is SUSPENSION. If I am recording a live event, I would put my iPod with TASCAM iM2 on its own tripod, which has a shock mount. But what shockmount solutions are you D100 using? Certainly you must know that if you are recording nearby people in an audience that footsteps be picked up by the recorder. I've find the following suspension products on Amazon that look like they might work when used with the D100, but I have no experience to say one way or another:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L2ZNFYO/https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CO2CP0O/Probably both of those products stacked would prove to be the best tripod shock absorption solution overall.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks.