Gary Davis:


Here are the main improvements and drawbacks I found over the D8:

1. Smaller, lighter, thinner, slips into pocket better.
2. Improved button layout -- "light" has completely different feel 
than other buttons (it's a half-moon), and is nowhere near "pause".  
Both are easily accessible even with the case on.
3. Separate line and headphone outputs.
4. Headphone, mike, and line circuits all improved!  They don't 
distort at all through a wide operating range.  The line input easily 
handles +4 board level (you could hide the deck in the cable-bay of a 
soundboard!), mike input said to be greatly improved also.  Headphone 
output distortion fixed.
5. The tiny remote-display is really great, it even includes both 
left & right record level indicators and "over"!  But no record 
button.. the best you could do from the remote is record-
pause>record. (no light either).  The Hold button on the machine 
operates separately from the one on the remote.
6. This remote-display is the very first Sony to have a STANDARD mini 
headphone jack, so you can plug in your own headphones.
7. Start_ID Add/Erase/Renumber/Auto on the machine.
8. Has a button combination to display SCMS (listed in the manual!)
9. Very stealthable with the black case on, it doesn't even look like 
a tape recorder.
10. Mike limiter switch and wider dynamic range of mike input also 
make it more stealthable.  (Limiter doesn't work for line input, 
unfortuantely).

====== these are all nice improvements, but here are some problems ===

A. Risky with 90m tapes.  It seemed to record and play them ok, but 
when I tried to "reverse-scan," it twice "slipped" the tape and there 
may have been a small amount of tape damage.  I didn't try it again.
(The dat store doesn't give me free tape to destroy, unfortunately).
B. The D-100 doesn't seem to back up the tape as much to look for the 
A-Time when starting a recording.  Result: lots of tapes w/o Atime, 
or where the A-time was lost when I put it on "hold" between acts.  
There's nothing like a 6-hour tape without A-time....
C. It loses the program number when you put it in hold (but not the R-
time).
D. Speaking of hold & load, I thought separating Hold & Eject was 
inconvenient.  Since you usually have to take it out of hold before 
you can load a tape, it's an extra lever to push, and it's 
inaccessible with the case on.  Also, the loading door doesn't pop up 
like the D8 to let you know it's ready.  And though I didn't time it, 
it seemed to take forever to load and unload a tape.
E. Much shorter battery life /w Alkalines, but technically, it's 
battery life with rechargables is *longer* than the D8 (which runs 
about 3 hrs on nicads)
F. Doesn't work well with POC-DA12, RMD-3K accessories (though new 
models for the D100 are available).
G. Record level control makes less rotation - ie, numbers are closer 
together.

The D100 includes the rechargable batteries, recharger/AC supply, the 
mini remote-display, earbud headphones, carrying case, and dry 
cleaning tape.

[...]

--Gary