Definitely curious to about your experience. I've actually been a little disappointed with my H4n and would love to hear that the noise floor is substantially lower. The fact that they've stated specific design concerns regarding separating the analog and digital signal paths, it seems this may be the case. Here's to hoping :)
Looking at the spec it seems to be a very versatile recorder, but I hope they did not trade sound quality because of that. I would prefer just 2 high quality preamps to anything else. They can add everything they want over and above it but the base use should be the sound recording quality. I hope we don't have two wait too much for some reviews.
This could be the recorder for most of the indie crowd. If it has some very good preamps from the r-44 for the price of $ 500 it will be a very good choice. Until now we had the h4n and dr100 but the preamps where not that good and above that some much more costly solution in the $ 800 up version for a field recorder.
Fostex FR-2LE and Roland R-44 earned good appraisal. A far better than H4n and DR-100. But the built-in mics of H4n and DR-100 are nice match with a shot gun mic where the cardioid mics can record ambiant sound. R-44 looks great... except touchscreen. R302 has much simpler screen but no built-in mic.
Hopefully it will be cheaper than $550. I'd be interested just for the volume knobs alone. Trying to quickly adjust the DR-100's volume is not the easiest thing in the world.