i got a pmd670 for christmas, and took it to colorado for the keller/yonder show. i skipped my preamp due to not having a battery pack, and it was a mono preamp (still building the rig). i had my levels at -6 db and still distorted the hell out of the vocals. i figure its not using a preamp that did that, but im not sure. i took it to band practice last night and used my mono preamp and the levels peaked out if i turned the main input knob over 2. sensitive is one word for this deck.
oh, and if you use the phantom power on the deck, it will eat the hell out of your batteries. 8 AA's are supposed to last 6 hours, but i only got 4 out of it w/ phantom power on.
one more thing, if you use a 4 gb flash card, you can pull 6 hours of 48khz wav no problem.
anyone with one of these that has ideas on how to make the thing tame down a bit give me a shout.