Tascam DR-680

The Tascam DR-680 is pretty cool, there's just some things you have to keep in mind with it. 

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So you press the record button and the record button lights up. This is exactly what you expect. Then, depending on how you've set the menus and how the Tascam is powered, the front panel goes dark in order to save energy. But the REC light stays on.

If the unit is externally powered — even if that's a battery that's powering it — the front-panel LCD should stay lit.

So you're recording. Levels are dancing. The Tascam defaults to recording all six tracks and a mixdown to a stereo .wav file. This is right and good and the way it should be.
Now, when you cut — this is where you want to do a double-tap of the "pause" button. Actually, you're going to want to "triple-tap" that button. I'll explain why.

Here's what the first tap of the PAUSE button does. The PAUSE and the REC buttons are both illuminated. Plus, the LCD display has lit up again (or has remained lit if on external power).
But you wanna hit that PAUSE button again. Why? Because that's what tells the Tascam to finish up the file managment and write that data to the SD card so you don't lose your work in the case of a power outage.

So the first pause puts the machine into pause. The second pause makes sure your file will be properly written to the SD card. And the PAUSE light will go off after the second pause-tap.

But you're going to want to immediately hit PAUSE one more time because the Tascam does not pass audio through the headphones or through the direct outputs until it's in either PAUSE or RECORD.