"Everyone I've ever known to do a side by side comparison always chose the robust sound of the Delta over the Echo poop anyway"
Yikes, I can hear Red screaming around the forum corner right now...hehe
Well, obviously this is a controversial subject and not all DAWer's here in Whoville are holding hands and singing together over this one. I do have a Delta 44, have no complaints about the interface, short of the fact that I can't get the newer driver to work in my vintage Win 98SE box. I just want to make sure that jumping up to 8 or more I/O, I'm happy with the overall package.
At any rate, although I haven't done A/B comparisons with a Delta card, I've been quite happy with the Laylas (I've used both 20 and 24 bit models). I tend to trust tmpro's judgement but his is the only one that I've seen anywhere that thinks Echo sounds like "dirt." Personally I've chosen not to support Maudio because of their shitty driver issues, lousy support, and the longstanding, blatently disrespectful position they've taken with Sonic Foundry. I don't know if anything's changed in this regard but Echo has always worked closely with SF/Sony and my experience with their support techs has been outstanding. Additionally the Layla has both ADAT and SPDIF (which I need) and the Delta 1010 only has SPDIF.
I tried a m-audio mobilepre and a duo I didn't like the sound of the mobilepre the duo was a little better but the drivers sucked. I never could get it recognize 4 channels.
I got a good deal on a mona and I think it sounds great. The drivers installed so easy I thought they failed but they were there 100%, all the channels were there able to assign. I have recorded over 6.5 hours in 24/96 on 4 channels with perfect sync. maybe I should have tried a delta.
I have a Layla 24 and it is totally silent and transparent.
Have never tried anything else, so I can't compare,
but it certainly can't be called "dirty" sounding by any means.
And why are a couple of XLRs so great on an interface?
Wouldn't you just as well use your outboard pres or a mixer?
How many XLRs do you need in many different places?
I would only be interested in the newer 3G models for the better converters – not additional mic pres. Realistically they can't be very good for what they are selling for.