Just what I needed and more!

I needed this recorder to record praise team practice at church so I'd have the exact same thing to practice with at home. I sit near the piano, but it picks up sufficiently well to get the voices from the choir. I run it through my limiter/compressor at home and add the individual tracks to an RW CD.

The quality has been so much better than I expected that I'm recording the songs I do at a nursing home and plan to make a CD of them when I get enough.

The playback volume isn't great, but I didn't expect it to be. Although I read the instruction book--most of it, anyhow--I found this unit so intuitive to use that I wouldn't have had to use the book. But without the book (my only criticism is a couple of typos) I wouldn't have learned about some of the features I wouldn't have thought of using.

Great Sound

I purchased the Tascam DR-08 for quick live recordings. I was blown away at the quality of the sound ! If you are a singer /song writer you need one of these.

Holding up so far

I purchased this recorder right before burning man this year (2010) as a trial to see if I could get any good field recordings along the way. I didn't do much along the lines of field recording as there was too much else going on but it worked out great in the end.

This is the only recorder I have ever used but to me the mics are plenty sensitive for what I need. Being able to switch between two record volumes with a switch on the side is really nice.

I have three complaints about this thing though:

It would have been nice to see this thing made out of metal. The front plate is sheet metal and that got a huge dent in it the first day but that's it. The mics are held on with plastic as well and I am still scared that they are going to snap off. It's been kicking around in my gig bag un protected for a while now and it's held up, but in the long run I can see it becoming a problem. Also, being made out of plastic, it creaks a bit in your hand.

The other complaint I have about this is that the glue holding the rubber feet on melts pretty easily. Maybe it was being out in the desert that did it but I would expect better. Though I don't know if the feet were really supposed to be sound isolating, it was nice when I still had them.

The output could be louder as well. The headphone out is fine but the speaker on the back is no where near loud enough.

It wasn't a complaint for me but some people might not enjoy fumbling with the micro-sd cards as they are really small.

The interface is a little strange as well but you get used to it.

One more note: It crashes the iPad when you try to use the Camera Connection kit to pull recordings off... but that's almost to be expected...

I hope this helps some people!

Nice - but get the PDF manual

The unit itself is great, works well, and has an intuitive function menu.

Sound quality is surprisingly good.

My only gripe was the incredibly tiny font in the supplied user manual. Save some grief and download the PDF version of the manual so you can actually read it..The few problems I encountered were solved with a better view of the instructions.

Definitely Recommended !

Sound is great. Recording is simple. The menus and sub-menus could be simpler and easier to use. The size is perfect for my needs. Another great product from Tascam!