Hi everyone, my first post here 
You may have already read these two reviews from Sond on Sound, may help: Emu 1616M Focusrite Saffire I’ve owned an 1820m for few years now. My comments: Pros: The breakout box has got a long cable to the PC The sound The flexibility of the mixer A lot of fun to plug in a keyboard / guitar and play in real-time with the effect chains. I found it sometimes very inspiring. I like a lot the software sampler Emulator X which only works with Emu hardware. Cons: The effects are OK only. Others may disagree. The mixing interface feels dated and unprofessional despite the very good hardware. The cons are details for me, I didn't buy the card for the DSP, it's a (fun) bonus. I don’t know if the Saffire offers this option, but on the 1820m you can you use a pair of outputs as a send and another as return which can be very handy if you have outboard processors. It appears an normal FX.
Hope that helped (a bit).
Thomas