hi all,

i've come into some money and now want to get myself a setup that will allow me to produce the music i've been desperate to do for the last 15 years. Now i had my heart set on getting an maudio fast track ultra 8r but reading comments about it in here have put doubts in my mind. so i'm open to suggestions.

i've got about £300 budget, it has to be usb and i'd prefer it rack-mount i'm not too worried about poor preamps cos i've got a behringer mic2200 already for that.

i await your input

I'd probably consider the following depending upon your exact requirements.

£200 - NI Komplete Audio 6
£300 - RME Babyface
£400 - Motu Hybrid

All of which will have better preamps that the Behringer unit you already have btw.

Thankyou but the only one of them that looks like it can be rackmounted is the motu and even then i wouldn't know how to do it. Any rackmount ones within that budget apart from the maudio? I'd prefer at least 4 inputs outputs are not an issue and like i say it has to be usb.

Motu Ultralite Mk3 Hybrid or Motu 4pre are both rackable and have USB connections. Rack ears are £10 from Motu themselves so not hard to sort out.

The 1818VSL matches your requirements without having to pick up the extra ears but I'd still lean in the direction of the Motu for the extra driver performance.

Thankyou that motu does look good i think i might give it a go.

what about the focusrite scarlett 18i6 any opinion on that?

Good convertors and signal flow, middle of the pack driver performance. Isn't bad at all and a great choice if you need that combination of inputs but my previous list still stands.

Price / Quality win NI Komplete Audio 6

Komplete Audio 6 is much better - better build, sound quality and drivers. It's really an awesome interface, the only better usb 2.0 interface under $1000 is Babyface, which is $750.