If only they stuck a nice 20 or 40GB hard drive in that thing.

It does seem a bit pricey for not having better storage. You can get a less expensive iRiver unit with a 40GB that records .wav, .mp3, or .wma and allows direct dragging of files back and forth to a PC. It doesn't have balanced IO though.

Price looks very good actually, you need to factor in things like quality of mic preamps, having phantom power, balanced inputs and manual gain control. Also you can record at upto 24/96K.
If you compare price to Fostek or Marantz units it's very competitive.
I'll be interested to see what the guys at Tapers think of the mic pres.

Bob.

Yeah and you can bypass the pres by connecting a dedicated pre to the spdif input !

Oops, you're right John... correction done about the name...
I'm eager to read your comments. The unit really looks promising to me... : )

Bringing it up...
SO, any comments, one month or so after the original post ? Did someone bought the unit and has an opinion? : )

No one likely has the unit yet, they were delayed in shipping from Japan, and are expected late this week or early next week.

Is that a definate maybe, last I heard they were having several issues making the thing work.
Bob.

Got a response from the dealer here a few blocks away: they're gonna have some in three days for $500 CDN.
I'll have a look at it and probably buy one for my next gig (documentary, usefull for ambiances/roomtones and to back up interviews).
I'll let you know if there is some issues, if they actually get the units in three days without delay 'cause I'll be leaving next weekend...

farss : have an idea of what were the problems ?

There are a few over on the Avid forums that have used it. Might be worth looking there to see if someone has a review.

I wonder how they would have used it...not shipping yet. M-Audio in LA says that they only have a few units for demo in their offices. I think folks are probably just talking about it a lot.

Bob, I dunno if they're having probs or not, but got notice that mine had been allocated, and was scheduled to ship late this week or early next week. M-Audio's website says early Sept, Soundprofessionals.com says same. M-Audio had a prototype at Summer NAMM last month, but my understanding is that it wasn't a working prototype.

I wonder how this unit compares to the Marantz PMD 660?

http://www.transom.org/tools/recording_interviewing/200503.pmd660.html

I like the Marantz better (on paper; haven't tested either yet, of course). By the time I'm ready to buy, sometime next Spring, there ought to be more entries in this field.

Maybe the Fostex unit is vastly superior to the M-Audio and the Marantz, but at almost triple the price, I wonder if you actually get triple the quality / durability?

---John

Best unit so far is the Edirol R4, Doug Oade's Tapers forum seems to give it a pretty good rap and I'm quite happy with mine. Only gripe is having to use AA NiMH batteries when you're away from mains power and with the thing running a full clip you'll get about an hours recording time from one set of batteries. I'm looking at a way to use an external larger battery pack but that'll take a bit of engineering.

This is a full field recorder though, not something to put in the pocket. Mine so far has mostly been used for doing dubs from 1/4" at which it works very nicely although I've had to add 10dB pads to the line level inputs to handle +4 dBm.

Bob.

Bumping again...
They still haven't get the unit at the store.
Anybody had the chance to test so far? What were the issues? I did some research on the web but didn't find about actual "real" issues. Just comments about the performance, based on the announced specs and not on the actual item. : \