well, in order to compete with the MOTU stuff, it'd better be under a grand, US, for both the 8 and 12 channel versions. i like the software that comes with the ECHO stuff..one great thing about it is the fact that you can route the computer sounds to the digital outputs of the soundcard, or not. also you can play a 44.1k wav file thru the box, which is normally locked at 48, but still hear the output at the correct pitch. i have recently bought a MOTU 828mkII and when i master radio spots as 44.1/16, i cannot play them back (via Soundforge, for instance) at the corrct pitch. You CAN however, play 44.1k stuff back via Vegas even tho vegas is set at 48/24, but i use SF for mastering purposes....destructive editing, normalizing, etc.