Lawrie old chap, your are of course one mans idea of “professional†could be anothers “amateurâ€, although purely on specificatuions points, ie for example what you can get from the professional/studio market compared to the “hifi audiophile sell them crytals and they will buy it†industry, is on different plains. Thus you can spend £300 on a Marantz 7300 (I would buy a second hand Toshiba SD-900e myself) or you can buy a PMD-325 for the same money and get XLR anlg & AES/EBU, if looks are not a concern and connections are (ie you have an amp or DAC with balanced connections) they are valid hifi components, as they Tascam is. I would have to removed the rack mountings. £900 dude and look at that back panel, never mind it’s DSD compliant too if a digital output is ever ratifield for SACD, but for both digital & anlg recordings to CDR or DVDR, I have not seen such a well specced audio device, for example :
Run your Harry Belfonte 56 Carnegie LP through the Orbe SE/Ear straight into the anlg inputs, then select 24 Bit 192 Khz PCM, slot in a DVDR and record. Holy Moly !! One as good as you will ever get digital resoltion copy of a LP, yours in DVD-V/A disc.
PS I am starting to worry about my asthetic leanings when I see such a device as the Tascam and I could imagine it in my rack. Could also be used as a DAC I would imagine ie fed a digital signal and then listening via the anlg ouptuts of the deck.