El Barto just came by with his 722...man do i have to get back into taping. this thing is frickin cool. it is really really sturdy. boswell tried to tell me how sturdy it was, but i had to see for my own eyes. it is just as bombproof as the v3. Bart had taped some shitty band in a shitty arlington bar the other night (Ragtime) so the sample wasn't the best to really evaluate how the box sounds. he ran 140's>722@24/96 with the limiter on. at first we were listening through the 1/8" line out and the headphone out. it really didn't sound all that good. there was some weird crunchiness to the upper mids that was awful to listen to...very fatiguing. at first we thought that might be the limiter. then we thought maybe it was the shitty PA. at this point, we couldn't connect it digitally since i didn't have a BNC > coax adapter so we went out to Rat Shack and got one.
When we connected it digitally, the sound was vastly improved. I was very very impressed. especially given that this was not a good sounding room. the "tape" was very musical, very smooth mids and highs. the low-end was there and sounded very nice, not too punchy, but definitely there. this was not the tape to evaluate the low-end with though given the room and the PA. the low-end was not loose though, which is very common with the 140s (i use to run 140s>mme and 140s>v3). overall, i was very impressed with the sound of the tape. It reminded me of the smoothness and musicality that i loved when i had the 140s. I wouldn't say it was as crisp and detailed as the 140>v3 tapes I made, but again, this wasn't the tape to try and get a feel for the real sound of this box. Overall, I was very impressed with the sound of the source.
we were not able to get my PC to recognize the HD in the 722. whenever we would connect it to my PC, the 722 would lock up. Bart had this problem at home as well. overall, i am very impressed with the 722. the analog output stage is clearly sub-par. right now, it's hard to tell whether that's the D>A stage or the output circuitry, as I did not have mini-xlr's to use for that output stage.
i can't wait to hear this with various microphones in better rooms with better PAs. It should perform really well. I took some pics and will post them in a few minutes.
EDIT:
722 pics