I am seeking advice from those of you who have actually used both of these. If any of you (like Guysonic) have benchtested both of these units and can offer input, I would really appreciate it.
I am going with Sony. I have read enough to know that both of these are well built machines that will last. I have owned a portable high end Sony cassette recorder back in the early 80s and it was a great machine.
No stealth, no preamp in, maybe binaural mics plugged straight in eventually, but for now I want to go with internal mics only. Living room or church or hall recording of acoustic musicians in a sem-circle singing and playing straight to a stereo wave file. Point and shoot, maybe 24/96 to be dithered and mastered down to 16/44.1 for CD.
At this point in my life, I don't want to mess with plugging great external mics into great preamps into recorders. I have a bunch of Pro Tools LE and external accessories multitrack gear like that that I am not using and will probably sell. At 53, what I value most of all now is the best quality I can get and simplicity. Overdubbing, editing, mixing and mastering is just more time consuming than I am willing for it to be. I want the audio equivalent of an excellent Polaroid Land camera. Point, shoot, high quality. What you aim it at is what you hear.
So, pretending that money is no object, (although the D1 is pretty pricey,) if you had to pick one of these machines to do what I am wanting to do, which one would it be and why? Any personal experience or stats comparing the preamps, mics and ease of use of these would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your time,
bilco