I am a hobbyist building my first DAW and have this as my initial configuration.

H/W: P4 64bit Fatality 1 motherboard, 2 GB ram DDR2, 4 Raptor drives, XP sp2
Editing S/W: Reaper 2, RealPlayer 10
Speakers: Event ASP8

For AI's I have tried Alesis IO|14 and Konnekt 8. The Alesis had serious driver problems though I really liked the hardware. The Konnekt 8 Control Panel software won't run on my PC (still to get tech support help on getting the Konnekt 24 drivers).

I like the form factor of these units and simplicity of use. I have a budget of 500-1000+ for a good IA and thus am canvasing this forum for any suggestions. Quality components is key for me at this time.

Jim

Have you thought about a rackmount unit, like a used FireFace 800? Or is that something you'd like to stay away from?

+1 for the RME units. Your driver and stability problems will be over. Rock solid.

Michael and Dave,

Should have looked closer at the RME products sooner. Probably would have saved me many hours of driver/sw hell. The Fireface 400 looks proper for my needs.

Thanks for the lead.

Jim

Good luck, that should work out very well for you!

Yes, I'm very happy with my RME Multi-face II after previously using M-audio and Motu interfaces. If I ever upgrade, I would stay with RME unless I had a much bigger budget.

Been using a F800 for over a year now. Had some problems on G4 Powerbook, that were apparently driver related, but no probs at all running on my PC at home. Will be running it on MBP next month so hope we have better luck than the G4. I actually need to get the G4 issue resolved as I'm inheriting it after the upgrade to MBP.

Running Logic 7 (and now 8) on the Macs and Nuendo on the PC

Not to hijack, but Bazz, I can crash my MacPro if I power up the FF when the system has programs running using audio output. Other than that one way , It's rock solid on my Mac, I don't think you'll have any problems. I've really only had problems when powering the unit up while having iTunes or streaming audio already started. Never had a problem during recording in any way.

Thanks for the heads up,Old School. Good to know as we haven't integrated it with the new MBP yet. I'm confident though that the FF will perform just fine.

+1 on the Fireface. It is the most stable interface I've ever used. The company is ON TOP of their drivers.

After taking the advice offered, I have spent the last 6 hours listening to and truly enjoying the RME Fireface 400 coupled to Focal's Solo 6's.

Little effort required to put this rig together. Drivers are clean and problem free. The 400 is everything it proclaims to be in the preamp department for playback. I won't have a chance to do any editing or mixing till this weekend, but my feelings are it will continue to be as enjoyable to use and meet my limited needs.

Thanks all for the guidance. Definitely worth listening to.

Side note: Konnekt did get back to me with the solution to the software problem and their product works fine. Turns out you need to load the Konnekt 24d drivers as well as the Control Panel makes a call to them. Going to use this weekend to do a side by side comparison between the Konnekt 8 and the Fireface 400 before sending it back.

Jim

Nice - sound wise, I think either the RME or Konnekt would probably do you very nicely...as long as the drivers are happy. The Focals are supposed to be great monitors, too!

Glad to hear it's all up and working for you! Interested in your weekend test results also!