Sound Cards?, so many...so little time Options

Hi. I don't know about everyone else, but it seems that in order for me to choose a sound card I will need to clear my schedule for the next ten years. There seems to be so many and it is rather overwhelming to sort them all out. I was hoping that somebody somewhere might have some experience in this department to help me sort this out.
I suppose I should say that I would like to run an intrument into it with a 1/4 interface, my powered monitors, headphone out would be nice too... into my new G4(9.2). Or, as I have read, i guess they can have midi interfaces? Would I then need a seperate box to plug instruments into and then into the card? PCI? Oh god...

Any info/help/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

You could probably be happy with several of the possibilities out there. If I were you I'd make a checklist of options and stack 'em up side by side. You know, input types, midi, phantom power for mics, latency, etc. You'll find out more about what you need by doing that, too.

My particular choice right now would be a MOTU 828 firewire. It has zero latency monitoring of input, phantom power for two inputs, and is designed to work well with Digital Performer, my personal favorite. It has no midi, but you can get a usb 2 midi port for $70 these days.

I've used the Digi001 a lot and it's good, but the plugins seem to hog more CPU power than equivalent ones in DP. Pro Tools LE might be more stable than DP right now, but I'm guessing the DP 3.1 update will be a nice improvement.

Thanks BagHun. Do you happen to know if the Motu can be used with other software besides DP?

Thanks

It has the proper drivers for Logic Audio. There are always weird things when you 'mix brands'. For instance, ADAT input into the 828 will not be 'sample locked' when using Logic on the 828. A thing that would never concern me.

Cubase would probably work. Pro Tools won't, of course.

The 828 comes with an 'audio only' app called AudioDesk which is basically Digital Performer without midi.

Midi didn't seem like a big deal to me until I got into it. Now it's 75% of what I do.