God I hope that's the case... sorry I missed the part about NOT using phantom. 3 hours w/o phantom would be a JOKE and would possibly affect me getting this thing. (or it would make me buy two)
I need a recorder to go for the better part of a day. I was pretty much counting on at least 6 hours minimum!
I'll cancel my order and get a friggin' Marantz and run it line in if the MicroTrack can only do 3 hours... I was ALREADY bummed about the sealed in battery... I mean really, what the F&CK? The thing coulda' been a half inch longer and used DOUBLE AA... and then you coulda' had a pocket FULL of juice for anything! Even a power in that you could wire a battery pack to would be nice... The first thing I'll need to do is mod the adapter.
Funny you should say this about the battery. I spent 6 mos emailing back and forth with the guy who designed this unit last year (to help them define which features it would have, etc) and I STONGLY suggested that it have the following features that M-Audio elected to eliminate/change:
1-that it use a field replaceable Lithium-Ion battery, or if not, standard recharegable AA batteries. Yes, the size would grow, but I thought the slight difference in size wold be worth it.
2-that it should have a limiter (switchable, of course). I find the limiter function on the R-1 to be very handy.
3-that it should use XLR's for the balanced mic inputs, not the TRS 1/4" (although they created a nice market for adapters :-).....I would have preferred the XLR's though. Again, the size would have increased a little......
4-that the max file size would allow at least 6 hours of recording at CD quality without stopping.
There were other minor points, but these were the major ones.
Chris Carfagno
The Sound Professionals, Inc
www.soundprofessionals.com