The soul band I play in uses it to do sound and record all of the gigs into reaper. It works great, no problems with it. Is it a neve? No, but it works just fine for what we need. I don't notice any noise on the preamps. As for gain, I have so much gain it is not funny. I am constantly padding mics down, what levels are you shooting for? If you are shooting for -18 in your digital system, as is now widely suggested (being equivalent to 0 Vu) you should be having none of those issues. That's another thread (and there are good ones out there abotu tracking at low levels). I would guess that none of the gains on our board are up above halfway, and most are well below that. The build quality is not super tough, but certainly no worse than the mackie and behri stuff that is in the same range. It is in a roadcase, so it stays protected, and so far has worked very well for us. As always, with audio and firewire, you are best served with a firewire interface with the TI chipset- I have had no problems with stability of the driver or anything when using my pcmcia firewire card (which has a TI chipset). You can hear some examples at
TOTAL SOUL PARTY!.