On 02/07/2004, at 19:19, Tony Maxwell wrote: > M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (I know it's 4 in, 4 out) > ESI Juli@ (Anyone seen this card? Balanced I/O. Great specs. Cheap. > OSX drivers coming) > Mbox (Different approach, but preamps and portability option are nice. > Not 96kHz - is this > a real issue?) > > Anything else I should look at? Any reason not to buy any of the > above? Any advice appreciated!!! Have you considered going digital in and out to a surround amp? That's what I would be investigating if I had a G5 right now. The money you save just to get 2 in 2 out can usually buy you half of a decent surround amp. You would still need a decent mic pre, which is easy to get. Another option is the DIO (can't remember the company) which is a stereo DA/AD box. One of the big advantages with this solution is: No more drivers. No more half baked implementation (M-Box), forgetting the settings on restart (mAudio), waiting for updates etc... These solutions should simply work because everything has to work with the native sound of a mac (and sound good too as you are going digital to a [presumably] high quality amp). I'm sure going optical into a nice NAD surround amp will yield a sweet sound. I hope I don't get proven wrong here. Has anyone tried this yet? Tom