Hi all,
I have been working with the MR-1000 for a couple of weeks now.
Generally, I have to say that the unit itself is pretty reliable, which means it hasn't let me down so far.
I am doing a number of classical music live recordings every year, sometimes multitrack, sometimes 2tk (mostly concerts where there is not a lot of time for set-up and soundcheck), and I am pretty sure that the MR-1000 will be my tool for this summer's recordings.
There have been a couple of questions regarding the preamp quality of the unit, so I did a small comparison to check out the SNR of the MR-1000's preamps:
The units I compared the MR-1k with were my trusty RME Fireface 800 and a Tascam HD-P2. The mic input gain of each unit was aligned with a 1kHz sinewave (-56 dBu) @ -20 dBFS, the tone generator was switched off (but not disconnected) and silence was recorded (@ 48kHz 24bit).
All of the files were imported into Wavelab to compare the RMS levels of the silence, and here's the outcome:
a) Tascam HD-P2 : noise floor -73,37 dBFS
b) RME FF800: noise floor -94,38 dBFS
c) Korg MR-1000: noise floor -81,93 dBFS
Regarding the pure sound of the MR-1000's preamps, I have to say that it's pretty hard to rate them at all. The adjective "concrete" comes to my mind when listening to them ... hard, precise, maybe a bit sterile.
I personally will be using a Sound Devices 302 (transformer-balanced) as front end, compared to the Korg's own pre's they add a bit of warmth and detail IMHO, apart from that I do 3-point stereo miking occasionally which needs a third mic-in
Yours,
Martin