The separation of the two sides is called stereo recording, and you need either a stereo mic or a binaural mic. the stereo mic will sound like a regular unmastered song on a tape or CD depending on the mic quality; and, the binaural mic will sounds will sound like something your actual ears hear due to their placement( about the distance between your ears).
The jog dial is a wheel on the side of the unit used to scroll up and down and select items, very handy. The optical output is a jack that uses fiber optic cables for less quality drop in sound quality, most optical jacks also accept regular plugs except the toslink jacks which must have an optical cable to be used. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by depth, but shock time is probably refering to the anti-skip time on the unit, i.e. Sony's G-shock protection.