I'm pleased to report an initial success with the DR100MKII. I went to a show last night in an odd venue for taping. It's an old house converted into a bar. When shows are indoors,the band sets up in a small alcove opposite the bar area. Due to the layout,getting good mic placement would be difficult. The areas where a stand could be set up are limited,and of those preferred areas, most have ceiling fans directly overhead,and ceilings are moderately low. I was pleased to find that while the opening act played indoors,the headliner (Hayes Carll) was playing outdoors in the back porch / back yard area. Mic placement opportunities were many,but I instead opted for a soundboard feed,as I wasn't sure I'd have time to set up prior to the start of Hayes' set. The Tascam proved to be as easy to use as I had hoped. The soundboard was located immediately next to the stage,and my presence there would have been a distraction for the band,soundman and audience, so I had to adopt a "set it and forget it" plan. My guesswork on the moderate level settings proved to be accurate,although probably a little more conservative than I would have ran if I had been there babysitting the unit. I was a little disappointed with the AA battery life. The show was about two hours,but the Tascam had seemlessly (as far as I know) transitioned to the li-on internal at some point. I was running Panasonic alkaline batteries,based on the 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours of run time I would get from them with my DAT. I was running the Tascam with no internal mics, no phantom ,and no backlight so I guess I was expecting more. I would have guessed that transferring energy to motion (as with the DAT) would have been the greater strain on the batteries.
I only listened to a brief snippet of the show when I got home,due to having only 4 hours (and counting) of sleep available to me before work this morning. I picked up some kind of noise,like a low level hiss or buzz. It may have been the guitarist's amplifier's hum coming throuh the PA, or maybe interference from the lighting. I was listening on headphones,which made it seem more pronounced,but it was really only evident between songs or during dialog. The quality of the music was very nice indeed. Looking forward to a listen tomorrow.
Thanks again for the help and support from all of you here who lent a hand. I felt fairly confident going in due to the support I found here. I will take the analog out and burn the show to cd before I attempt to do anything with the file, thereby securing the recording in some form. I still need to buy a computer and learn the next steps.
Hayes Carll played a new song about one of his fantasies called "One bed,two girls and three bottles of wine" that was quite amusing,as you might guess.