the price drop must have happened in the last few months. they also reduced the price of the 01x digital mixer / control surface (i think it's under a grand now)...
anyway, mlan is a firewire audio/midi networking protocol. it's built into the current mac os at the system level and is supported on windows via an asio driver.
some reviews of the i88x:
http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?secti...storycode=4652 http://www.musictechmag.co.uk/mtm/download/i88x http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan0...yamahai88x.htm
hope it helps...