Motu is reliable and built solid. They seem to have kept their drivers up inspite of all the chages in the PC market. Mackie and Presonus are some others to look into. A lot of these manufacturers have forums or FAQ's. I usually go through those to see how the products perfom and see how good the support is.

mackie onyx 1640 w/ firewire option installed.

I agree with Jeremy. For the money you're able to spend, the Mackie Onyx 1640i would be my choice. You get the flexibility of a GREAT mixer, with a high-quality Firewire interface. For the money, can't be beat!!

Reviving an old thread. Jeremy's post was in 2007. The Onyx i series were still in R & D. Anyway. Yeah, they are nice. I may turn to one in the new year. Unless Avid surprises me.

Avid surprise you? LMAO! Good luck there.

Also check out the Allen & Heath ZED R16 and R24. But yes, these three provide lots of bang for the firewire small studio board setup.

If fader manipulation is not a concern, I would add the RME FF800 into the mix.
Granted, you'll have to have an ADAT unit or two to go beyond 10 I/O, but I love the damn thing.

FWIW, the A&H ZED series looks VERY nice!

I'd second the FF800 - the difference between it and the Motu is very noticeable imho. I've not used any of the mixer/firewire solutions but have been very taken with the comments & responses about the ZED series and would certainly consider it. When I need a desk which does routing and conversion (read: headphone mixes, multiroom scratch tracks) I actually use a Ramsa DA7 desk which although not top-line is cheap and massively functional, the interfacing is an issue, I have ADAT outs for 16 digital outs and 2 more from SP/DIF but there are plenty of plugin cards for it - none Firewire or USB to my knowledge.

I'm also an obvious fan of the FF800 since I have two of them. That, some very nice preamps, an HD24XR and a summing mixer are all I need for my live recording business. And good studio monitors.