Well I picked one of these up last week, ran some tests at home (just to run a few tests & familiarize myself with it a bit) and then took it out for some real world festy experience this past weekend.
A couple observations:
- Very logical and user friendly interface, menus, etc. Display is great - I like the way it gives you a dB number for the peaks every couple seconds AND has the peak light you can see from a distance. The low/mid/high mic gain switch gives you a nice range. I used the "mid" setting with the level between 4-6 on the knob most of the time
- Pres seem to be quiet and transparent. Not quite as much so as the Oade R-44, but pretty damn good for a $300 unit. Much better than the stock PMD-660 I had a while back.
- a little too easy to hit the 'STOP' button when bumping or handling it (not a big deal, I just need to get in the habit of using the 'HOLD' function, which I should be doing even with the R-44)
- battery life is much better than I expected, after what I had read here. I recorded a 2+ hour set running phantom and had 1 bar left on the Li-Ion. It didn't switch over to the AAs until after listening to some stuff on the way home (probably another hour or so)
- it does NOT accept 24-bit from the Busman UA-5. It DOES accept 16-bit, although that definitely limits its use as a bitbucket (until I can upgrade my preamp anyway). I would be curious to know how it works with other pres / A/Ds