I asked this same question a while back. The answers were about the same and sent me scurrying to e-bay. No need to scurry actually. There seems to be a steady stream of Audiophile 2496's, Delta 44's 66's, 1010LT's and 1010's flowing through the system. <FYI> There are a few Audiophile 2496's selling for as low as $129.00 on the "Buy It Now" button. I haven't followed anything to completion but the 2496 that ends auction in 13 hours is currently at about $100.00. There's also a pair of BX-5 studio monitors "New in box" (Retail $399.00) currently at $107.50 with a day and a half to go... </FYI> I still haven't decided what to get for myself, but I'm leaning toward the 1010 models because they have multi-I/O > 4 *and* MIDI. I also like the idea of an outboard rack mount unit. I have an empty space in my rack anyway. I'd like to save some $$ and het the 1010LT, but I am curious, has anybody had trouble with having that rats nest of cables behind the computer? Seems like that would be noisy. Also, how many inputs can you *really* record at once without xruns? I'm running a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 in an Ice Cube small footprint system. OTOH, I could cut my costs back and get an Audiophile 2496. But does it really record/capture clean enough for semi-pro work? Useful answers to these questions would be very cool and much appreciated. :-) Peace, ~Jos~
