->M-Audio Delta 1010. Great Linux support. 24/96KHz, 8 balanced analog I/Os, 2 digital (S/PDIF), hardware monitoring. $600US from most dealers - Musician's Friend, American Musical Supply, Sweetwater, etc. I use an ST Audio DSP2000 C-Port which uses the same chipset, has the same I/O capabilities but uses unbalanced lines. It works great (it was also about $150US cheaper). The Hammerfall stuff is probably better but by the time you get all the outboard gear you'll need to record with them you'll probably have spent more than your budget.<- This came up a couple of months ago, and I'll repeat what I said then. RME hdsp/multiface is a great bet, but you will lose half of your channels if you are using 96k/24bit - not in your budget (might be later?), but you could configure two multiface cards connected by wordclock to get the 8 channels of 96k/24. Multiface has really good support in linux (thanks to Thomas Charbonnel), but does not have alsamixer elements, so (in my experience) some apps which require those elements (xine, etc) won't see the card... there's probably an .asoundrc way to handle this that I don't know about... Also, another annoyance is that under linux, it won't auto-detect an application wanting to use 96k - you have to set the sampling rate yourself, at least to something nearby. I suspect this has to do with totalmix (see below) and the whole single-speed/double-speed thing (the thing which makes you lose half of your channels to do higher sampling rates). The hdsp 9652 is the same in this regard, but you do have more channels available, and so could potentially set it up to do 8 channels of 96k/24 - on the downside here, you are going to have to rely on the DACs of some other device, as this one is totally digital (you could get one of the RME 8-channel expansion boards, but I'm not sure this would be the best setup for you - read about it on their website: http://www.rme-audio.com/english/aeb/aeb48o.htm ). A plus of the multiface is that you can use the box with both a cardbus on a laptop and a pci on a workstation/desktop, so that if you needed to record something on the laptop you could just swap the outboard box... no dongles, nothing unnecessary. Another plus of the multiface (and the 9652) is its software mixer, totalmix, which allows you to literally send any signal anywhere (which can be done in jack as well now, so it's not quite as important as it once was, unless you're using lots of non-jack apps). You should also look at what other people have been talking about - the M-Audio Delta 1010 is a very good card, but you only have 2 channels of digital out, and it's spdif (the multiface has 8 channels in/out of digital adat AND analog, plus 2 channels of spdif, at 44.1k/48k... 4 ins/outs at 96k). The DACs on the 1010 are quite good (very good for the price); the linux support is good (there's a nice gui mixer that isn't quite as sophisticated as the hdsp totalmix)... it has alsamixer elements as well, and will auto-detect a change in sampling rate (without losing channels, I think). One MAJOR caveat about this card - it tends to overheat and fry some of its capacitors, and you will be left high and dry with an intolerable humming. It happened to two of ours last year (it's happened to a lot of people - do a google search for "delta 1010 capacitors"), and the service was very poor - they sent us one back after "repairing" it with the same hum. If you do get a 1010, make sure you give it LOTS of ventilation - this means probably not putting it in a rack. We keep ours sitting out on top of a rack that also has a preamp, a dat deck, etc. No mic inputs on any of the cards I mentioned, but you can use a preamp with no problem. Stay away from firewire (note that the multiface uses its own firewire that's connected to the pci/cardbus with absolutely no problems under linux... when I bought mine, I was thinking "oh crap, is what I just bought gonna work here?" - but it's fine). Can't help you on the speakers - everyone has different preferences. In our studio we run a bunch of Genelec studio monitors, which seem decent... but apparently they quit making the ones we have and started making some sub-par monitors. I don't know much about it. Some people have reported good results with Mackie monitors, which are apparently good for the price - again, this isn't my realm of expertise. Your best bet is to probably go somewhere and listen to a bunch with some recording you know really well (and which would test what you need from speakers - preferably something with a wide dynamic range in all registers). Hope this helps - Matt
