Goport, I made mention of this before but it can't hurt to mention it again
I put
a lot of thought into what I
needed, as opposed to what I wanted, to get the best results I could within a reasonable budget. I thought about getting an internal PCI card like the Audiophile, but was turned off by it for several reasons...1) messy, hard to reach fan-out cables in the rear and 2) most importantly, all the research I made (specs) showed that anything internal, no matter how well shielded, will yield noise.
So that left me to pick from USB and Firewire devices. USB wasn't an option because very few USB2.x devices were available within a decent price and with stable drivers. Firewire has been around a long time and proven so I had to choose between available hardware. I went the M-Audio Firewire 410 route because it offered extremely low latency, all the inputs I could want (2 analog + 2 optical) and 10 outs to route to my heart's content. It offered the ability to daisy chain more devices into it but really just adding a good mixing board could allow a shitload of more inputs into the device if I ever wanted to record an entire band live...which brings me to another reason - PORTABIITY. I can use this with my Vaio laptop or any of my desktop systems...or bring it to a friends, etc. For $350 USD it offers an incredible bang for the buck...hell the 2 preamps in it alone sound so good it's like getting all the other features for free.
Ok, sorry about being so long in the tooth...carry on :lol: