Upgrading Digi001, music & audio hardware Options

[damann]

hi izzy, hi everybody wondering what the hell happened to me!

oh s**t, is it o.k that i call you izzy?
if i've got this right, you don't seem to necassarilly want to stay with digi here?
if not, the mobile i/o is apparently very good, but ultimately a mobile solution.
the rme stuff is very popular with ex digi people, but to compete with the 896 i think you might have to exceed your budget.
in my opinion, it's nice to keep those pci slots free for other goodies like uad1 and powercore cards, and of course, a strictly firewire solution can be implemented more practically when moving projects to other studios(if that's useful to you of course).
finally, on the subject of pre-amps. none of these interfaces have mic-pre's anywhere near as good as the neve! you mention guitars and rhodes pianos. they'll all benifit from a GOOD pre-amp(or two).
good luck, keep posting...