MOTU FireWire Audio Interface

[machina]

go check em out b4 buying anything and be honest with your needs.. the MOTU will give you problems on a pc and is notorious for this. if your gonna use it for years to come you really need to consider this! The RME fireface is 'really good' for the money and i personally would choose it over the MOTU but it is fed through Firewire, which is actually a usb on steroids, and will require a firewire port from your pc. Also its worth taking into account that if your only gonna record One track at a time from a hardware source, then it mght be worth looking into an interface with better but less convertors! Or maybe you will be multitracking live, in which case you will need more in's?! Dont 4get that you can record in MONO too if the signal really doesnt need to be stereo.. either way good luck mate !

i agree that the aurora's etc are much much better in terms of sound quality, but in the context, i don't think the gains are going to justify the extra money (they are ALOT more expensive). Given that most people here (especially if they are asking this type of question) probably have a fairly simple computer based/heavily digital studio, you simply won't need to have $3000 converters... the sources aren't good enough and the sound not dependent on that TYPE of warmth. The massive gains that you get from top end converters don't really apply until you have no other weak links (i.e. non high-end) in the studio and, more to the point, when dealing with music with heaps of dynamic and subtlety - acoustics/extremely intricate/ or band music and live instrumentation/vocals... it doesn't really matter too much in dance music where, more often than not, there is (relatively) little dynamic range and intricacy through the frequencies.

And motu's pc drivers are pretty solid these days - i don't know too many that have had problems with them... although you would want to make sure you have a proper TI firewire chipset. i've got both aurora 16's and an motu ultralite - and in this context and for the money, i would recommend the ultralite every time... if you really needed aurora's you would already know about them and know why you needed them, if you don't, you probably wouldn't notice the difference and will have $2000 more in your back pocket

machina