Background:
I wanted to update to Cubase 7 which requires Win 7. So I figure if I'm updating to Win 7 I might as well go 64 Bit to take advantage of the additional RAM. I have M-Audio Delta 1010 converters (I have three of them in the Studio, but have rarely ever used more than two at a time). So check the M-Audio website and bingo they have 64 bit drivers. So I buy all the software, create a new partition on my PC and load it all up. I'm playing around and making a few tweaks and everything seems to be working great. My brother comes over and we proceed to test it out recording his drum kit. Everything in the first 8 channels is working great but all channels in the second Delta 1010 sound like an angry robot. So I go through all the normal trouble shooting steps and find nothing wrong. So I start scouring the internet and find that this is a known issue that M-Audio is refusing to fix (Head nearly explodes at this point) not to mention that they are still selling this unit and make no mention of this issue on their website. So if I'm going 64 bit, I'll need new converters and at this point will NEVER buy another M-Audio product. So I figure I might as well try to bump up the quality of the converters if I'm buying new. So I'm looking at Lynx, Apogee, etc.. and choking on the price. So here are a few I'm looking at:

Steinberg MR816

TC Electronic Studio Konnekt 48

Please give me any info or experience you may have with these units and/or any other units that may fit my needs.

Needs:
I need at least 16 channels of good quality converters with or without mic preamp's. Firewire or USB doesn't matter to me just as long as I can stack units up to at least 16 channel (would be nice if expandable to more than 16 for the future).

I have read several forum posts elsewhere that claI'm the MR816 converters are as good or nearly as good as the Apogee high-end gear , but I also found out that when you stack more than one unit, you can only use direct monitoring on the first unit. Steinberg says this cannot be fixed. I don't need that many channels of direct monitoring right now because I'm using a recording console for most channels, but it would be nice to have it if I ever change my setup. The MR816 also has some nice DSP that integrates well with Cubase. Steinberg says you can stack three units for a total of 24 channels.

Haven't found much on the quality of the Studio Konnekt 48, but I know TC Electronic puts out some good gear and I'm sure the onboard DSP is good stuff. Each unit is 12 channel, but the output config is a bit sketchy. From what I can see only 8 channels on each unit have direct out capability for direct monitoring. Only two units can be stacked.