Absolutely. I have been toying with the idea of either the UA-1000 or going firewire with the 828MKII, or going for the gusto with the EgoSys Hexafire (all about the same price, however, the Hexafire does 16 channels vs. eight for the others).

Apparenlty (at least through one supplier), the Presonus Firestation has been discontinued.

Appreciate the comments, remeber:

A Great Philosophy to Live By

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- WOW--What a Ride!!!"

FF

Actually the 828 has 20 inputs in total usable at the same time:
2 Mic/instrument pres (front panel)
8x balanced jacks input
8x ADAT channels
2x S/PDIF channels (but you'd need to sort out clocking to use the ADAT & S/PDIF at the same time)
To get the further analog inputs, you could get one of these 8-chan mic pres with ADAT out - the cheapest option here is the Behringer ADA8000, I have no idea how it sounds.

While the UA-1000 has ADAT, it only works as 10 ins at a time - you can't use all the inputs at the same time (don't know why?).

Also just out is the Edirol FA-101 firewire interface, but again restricted to 10 ins I think. I think it can be soley bus powered, great for laptop work.

Looming on the horizon (available in the next couple of weeks, apparently) is the Emu 1820M - PCI based, 18 inputs at the same time (analog & ADAT & s/pdif) plus onbard DSP for fx, which you can intergrate via VST plugin technology, in the same way as a UAD-1 or Powercore. Again, no idea of fx quality :)
Also lets you route stuff internally - download the manual and have a read.

(PLEASE IMPLEMENT NATIVE VST SUPPORT INTO VEGAS, ACID ETC SONY!!! I don't want to use wrappers for the rest of my life....)

The Hexafire - my word that's an ugly looking box! This aside, I have considered this one in the past, and it's still not available. looks like the 9-16 analog i/o is on breakout cables, which I don't really like, but with twin ADAT i/o and the rest I guess they were running out of space. Nice price though.

Presonus apparently have something called the Firepod in the works:
see here
but it's not even feature on their own web site yet.

Also the M-Audio 18-14 Firewire box due out shortly. Don't know much about this one.

So to conclude:
I had an orignal 828MK1, which never worked reliably with my setup of the time. MOTU don't have the best reputation for the PC. It will either work really well or do weird things. Features-wise the mkII is pretty much my ideal box, which is why I'm actually considering getting one (plus they've had a couple of years to update drivers). But I'm gonna try and road test it first if/before buying.

The Emu 1820 is my second favourite from the above, though it's only just come out and I think I need to wait for reviews before taking the plunge. PC only so support should be ok (despite the Creative <spit> link). And did I mention that it's only $400, or $500 for the 1820M with the added sync card. The downside is that it's the only card here you can't use with a laptop because it's PCI based.

Next for me would be the Egosys Hexafire, assuming they release it someday. Despite by reservation listed above I do like the fact that it is the only interface with 16 analog i/o including 8 mic pres.
It's a 2U box, and if you couple the 828mkII ($750) with an ADA8000 ($199) you're getting all 16 analog i/o in the same rack 2U space without breakout cables, and both are avaiable right now.

Lastly the two Edirol interfaces - I like the four mic pres of the UA-1000, but the restriction to 10 i/o totally kills both of these for me.

Anyway, enough of me wittering on about products I don't (yet) own.

PS if it's raw analogo i/o you're after, the MOTU 24i/o provides 24 chans each way (but nothing else)

And have you looked at the RME stuff? None of them do it for me feature wise, but the muliface ain't too bad and they have a very good reputation.

I'm in the same boat as you guys. I think I'm going to go with the Firepod when it is released. I had the Firestation for a few days before returning it and the sound was fantastic. I heard it was discontinued and that the Firepod was coming out so I returned it, I'm in no real rush.

I'm going to get a Mackie 1202 and the Firepod. I'll use the 8 channels of the Firepod for drums and the Mackie inputs for scratch vocals, bass and drums durinng basic tracking. I always end up overdubbing guitar and bass anyway. It takes forever to find a guitar sound (and bass) record, fix the tracks, move to the next song. I find it holds the drummer up as well, I'd rather just do the bass and guitar on another day.

I'm actually still considering the Firestation if I can grab one for less than $400 I think I'd do it, perhaps $350 actually. I was really impressed with it's mic pres and converters during the two days of testing I did with it. I checked it on vocals and bass and they were both smooth and fat.

- Mark

I (fortunately) am going to be doing some "live" recording in large halls... they like the sound... So with that in mind I am looking for the laptop portability, numerous I/O's, and the ability to work with Vegas.

The MOTU 828 MK!! and Behringer combination sounds just right! With that kind of flexibility, I will also be able to integrate into my "location sound for film" side of the business.

Many thanks for the input and direction to all (ibliss, Hulk, and whr).

The only thing I wlil add is that if at all possible get a demo of the 828 working with YOUR system.