The sound quality of this device is remarkable. If you wear a pair of good studio quality headphones, it gives you the "as if you were there" feel. Once during a recording session, my 1-year old daughter walked in the room and I could have sworn that she was walking in the room when I was playing it back. I turned around several times to check if she was really there! The depth of the audio field is also something I have never experienced with any other recording device. There are recorded events where car alarms were going off a couple of blocks away and we didn't hear it, but upon playback, we could hear them (faintly) and it felt as if they were far away. The stereo field produced by the recorder is as best as real life, when using the X-Y microphone configuration. In a quiet house, I could pick up the high frequency sounds of a paper book being thumbed, and could tell which direction the sound was coming from. In the A-B configuration, the sound is a good "open air" sound. Great for picking up all ambient noises. Not so good for reproduction of sound for studio re-mixing, but great for picking up conversations from multiple directions. I would use this microphone configuration when recording sounds from multiple sources more than 120 degrees apart (less than 120 degrees and the X-Y will do just fine)

Reasons for the downgrade - With a device this good at picking up sounds, the wind baffle should come standard. The low frequency band filter works well for cutting out the wind noise, but you lose some of the clarity as expected with an artificial baffle. Also, the 4 soft-rubber feet on the back of the device do a good job to minimize the artificial sounds from vibrations, but I use a mini-tripod with rubber feet on a soft terrycloth towel to eliminate them altogether, and to eliminate the reverberation off the surface. The on-board software can do quite well for loops, marking locations of the file, folder structure for filing multiple recordings in separate session folders is great and easy to retrieve. File naming via date or user-defined filenames is good, but leaves something to be desired when scrolling through the alpha-numeric options with only an "up-down" key. I started using this feature, but stopped after the hassle of modifying filenames. The ability to change the recording settings "on-the-fly" are really good. That being said, I don't know why you would ever choose to record in an MP3 format (there are six levels of kbps bit rate selections) when you have the dual format WAV file (16 or 24 bit) and 3 levels of recording frequency (24, 48 or 96 kHz) options. If you buy a large SD card, there should never be any reason for compressing files that much unless you use this only for recording interviews, presentations, etc, but you could do that with a $20 Sony.

The interface takes a bit of getting used to. The biggest learning curve I had to overcome was that the buttons on the circle pattern on the front change their functionality depending on which screen you are in. Great job by the programmers to give you prompts each time this switches, but it still gets confusing. I would rather have a few more buttons on the device that remain "hard keys" or enable LCD displays in/around the keys themselves to give them a true "soft key" operation. The mixing features (over-dubbing, Equalizer, reverb, and playback speed adjust with no pitch change) are nice, but really not worth the effort. You do much better with any low-cost mixing software that can manipulate WAV files.

Quality of construction is solid and it feels like a solid-state device. The keys have good response and that solid "click" feel when you push them, however, if you push any buttons during recording, the "click" of them often drives the recorded audio to peak levels, which can cause a half second or two of re-leveling to occur. No big deal if you're just setting up, but if you want to change anything during a recording session, you will destroy the level of the input signal. The only thing I worry about is the convertible microphone operation. I have intentionally kept the microphones in one patter and switched them as minimally as possible because I worry about introducing noise in the signal when these eventually wear out. They have not yet, but it's just a lingering reliability fear.

Overall, this is worth the $180 or so (depending on where you get it) and I am thinking of buying another one for additional field work. In direct comparison with the Zoom line of digital recording devices, this seemed to have more features, but unless you are buying it specifically for those features, you may want to look at a DR-5 or lower. TASCAM's value comes from their microphones and their A/D and D/A circuitry. All the other digital manipulation is just gravy.

Unable to rate - Have not needed any support.

The smooth form and large display definitely add to the "jealousy" factor. The pre-record features offer a great way to demo the features without actually using data storage space. and when you flip those mics from X-Y to A-B - you get a "cool" from any observer.

Hobbyist Musician, Professional Engineer

Rock, Classic Rock, Heaby Metal, Country, Classical, Hip-Hop, etc

Its all I do.

Classical, blues, electronic.

Good

Rock blues more