Keep your eye on ebay - I see a few pop up there quite a bit. Of course, there are a lot of people who want them so the price goes up, but every once in a while someone puts one up with a buy it now that is much less than if you were to buy it new.

Nicely diagnosed Doc. The cheapest I have seen an RME Fireface 800 (new) is ?815 from Thomman. Can this beaten anyone?

Get the RME, the build and workmanship is second to none, can only be described as engineering excellence! "BBC"

Motu 828 MK2...Were happy with ours and it's 500 euros cheaper than the Fireface 800.Unless you need so many I/Os
All the stuff on our website was done with the 828 :lol:(But do take into consideration that it is internet quality) :wink:

you can always keep your current soundcard and use the spdif out with a dedicated DAC such as Apogee minidac/ benchmark dac 1. and some of the RME themselves.
or you can use a Presonus Central Station s DAC...for what i understand it sounds amazing..

but then you will be losing the capability of multi channel recording\convertion.
you need a card that can handle ADAT such as some of the RME cards for instance.

RME Fireface! I've never seen anyone not like it, also I've seen the least amount of complains/problems with them... The response on the fireface lead me to buy a Multiface II and I absolutely love it

lynx 2 is better for $
 

it's open for debate, but i listened to rme multi-face, benchmark, apogee, lucid, lynx, digidesign, motu...pretty much everything i could and found the lynx 2 sounds most like the high-end stuff in terms of clarity. i was also looking seriously into ramsa which is panasonic's high-end and a friend of mine who's a studio recordist [does large orchestral work] really felt that they were tops for 2k. i wasn't certain about the osx drivers and support w/ the ramsa, so i went w/ the lynx 2.

i didn't consider m-audio or other lesser quality cards for studio rig. my mobile setup uses a firewire m-audio thing which is fine for live--very stable/reliable, knock wood :roll:

Wise choice. From what I have read the Lynx II is a fantastic sounding interface. Shame it is only PCI (I have a dualcore Mac with it's PCI-express) so that's one off the list for me.

Now leaning firmly towards the Apogee Ensemble - when it comes out.