Suggest A Good Usb/fw Interface, Help beginners find affordable quality Options

[OneDerBoy]

One and all: Give your suggestions for a good quality, affordable interface for the beginners of the world.

I'm new to comuter based music production and I plan to run Logic Express 7 on a new iBook w/ 768mb of Ram. I need recommendations on audio interfaces with at least two input channels, including a good mic input as vocals will be a priority, hopefully under $500. This set up is to be used for demo song/sellable cd production; the focus however is to produce usable tracks for later studio additions. All suggestions are apreciated. Thank you.

This post has been edited by OneDerBoy: Fri 15 Jul 2005, 22:06

[arvidtp]

for just playing back audio and probably capturing it at CD quality, your 550MHz should still work. It is when you try to add realitme plugins and use softsynths that you will run into issues with 550 MHz. If you are just playing or recording (ie no realtime effects/interaction with the machine) then you can set your buffer size for the firebox as high as you want to avoid pops/clicks.

No, the firebox can record 6 channels at once (2 are digital only though, you need an external stereo AD converter). Two have are preamps and the remaining two are line level.