I had the good fortune to use the Edirol R-09HR wav/mp3 recorder for some time (firmware 2.0). Of course this machine has been reviewed earlier so i will not repeat the previous conclusions but i have some interesting findings that i did not read about before. First the volume of the built in speaker is low. Putting the volume at 100 does not really make it better. You have to put the speaker against your ear to hear anything. Headphones on the other hand can be set very loud. So don’t expect to fill the room with sound with this speaker. You have to find some amplified speakers to do that.
When you change the batteries some of the settings resetted themselves, at least on my machine. The file naming was reset to the default instead of the date as the filename. But the second time i changed the battery my settings were preserved. Strange but since i did not use the machine for some time, the internal? battery or capacitor ran out of power? But i could be wrong.The first time i started using the recorder i had to set the time. The second time when chancing the batteries i was not asked to set the time.
The remote control worked nicely, but i got some problems with the reception. Earlier (in some review video during a convention) it was mentioned this remote worked by radio. Well it does not. It used a infrared LED. So you really need a good line of sight to control the recorder from a distance.
Lastly this recorder can not stand “up”. The bottom is too rounded and the recorder will fall over when you try to set it upright. Too bad, but that’s probably why Roland is selling this thing.
Overal i am very impressed with the responsiveness, menu usability and built quality. It is worth each and every penny.