Newbie ?, Which a/d/a should I get? Help!

[zachinalaska]

Hi guys

I havnt been reading your posts on all the different audio interfaces because im in the market for one. My budget is 1000-1200 bux. I had a motu 828 and I thought it sucked, if that gives you any idea of what quality im looking for. I am a electronica artist and I want to track and mixdown an album at my house (then shoot it to a mastering house somewhere of course).

Based on your posts, I think the RME fireface 800 is pretty good, especially when its coupled with a word clock like a lucid 6x86 or apogee 200. I plan on buying seperate preamps, so crap preamps on the audio interface aren't a concern.

All I care about is clarity and fidelity. Basically the clock accuracy and the converters. In fact, the number of I/0's really doesnt matter either or if it has adat or s/pdif either cause all my effects are going to be software and I plan on buring it all to 24/96 wav and put it on cds to send to the mastering house.

Can anyone make a good recommendation or perhaps show a comparsion of the converters used in various models.

Thank you in advance!
zach

[Lance Hayden]

I like the metric halo uln 2 but it only has two inputs

[zachinalaska]

I was thinking a rosetta 200 (w/ the firewire card) and some summit audio TLA-50s for preamps. eh??

[Reptil]

for laptop & PC the new emu is amazing, next month in Sound on Sound
a friend got one of the first and he said the quality is stellar
me myself? RME