i've seen it said many times on the internet that PC's are very electrically noisy, and that this causes transmission problems with analog signals.

so i wonder, is it better to have an external ADC/DAC, connected by USB/Firewire/proprietary cabling? i've noticed that some of the high-end PC audio interfaces are rackmountable, and i can only assume that the reason is to convert to digital format before entering "The Twilight Zone". am i correct?

my next question is, does 1394 Firewire make a suitable transport for professional-level audio recording? i've read that latency is a very critical issue with DAW's, and i was wondering how Firewire performs in this regard.

thanks for the great forum, and thanks for being kind to the newbies. not everyone is.