4 high end press, pristine converters, one firewire unit?

That is an epic concept, love it.

I'm unimpressed with the converters in my 18i8, which I expect are the same or very close. I did some serious DAC shootouts with the Focusrite, Emotiva Stealth, Fireface 800, and Svartbox and the Focusrite was totally outclassed by everything IMO.

damn, i was considering the 18i20

Mostly there is pretty good. I think my ultimate 4x4 rig under $1,000 has now become two Tascam UH-7000 with a used RME Raydat or similar PCI(e) interface card. That would be a right monstrous rig. And you could add a Behringer ADA8200 for drums or whatever. This is something I'm working on that I haven't fully tested yet, but seems like a good idea.

How do you think the Tascam units compare to the other 2x's out there that they seem to "look" like they are trying to emulate?  They obviously have a style similar to the Lynx and others at a much lower price.  I found a demo of the 56 in which an entire song was recorded with it, and I was not unimpressed for the price-range.  



at 14:55

The RME PCI / PCIe card would be acting as the interface and software drivers, so you'd get that super low latency and RME's drivers, which people rave about, and which I have yet to try.  The Tascam, as good as it is, the drivers are a little slow in latency performance.  Which may or may not be a problem based on your application and how you like to work.  With the RME card latency would most likely be a non-issue and you could play VSTi instruments, etc, without any delay.

Yes, you could just connect two UH-7000 with the AES I/O on the back, two AES cables would do the trick, then run that 4x4 rig to the computer on one USB.

The other reason I would want the RME is because the Tascam maxes out at 4x4, you can't go past that, they are not daisy chainable beyond the AES/SPDIF I/O.  So if you had some nice RME card you could add a bunch of ADAT channels.  This is just me thinking about my ideal portable tracking rig where I could do a whole band or whatever.  If I had a small gig maybe I would just grab the Tascams and go for it.  But the rack I'm planning isn't all that large anyway so maybe I'd bring it anyway.

Ben, the Tascam sounds as good as any interface I have ever heard.  It's got a very transparent and clean quality to both the preamps, and the conversion.  It's mind-blowing what they cost compared to how great they sound, I feel like it's a real sleeper.  The sound is so good, I have decided I want more clean preamps now.  These are better than stuff I've used in the past like Sytek, SCA C84 (Millennia-ish), and any of the interface preamps I've used on other units.  They seem to have gone the extra mile to get them sounding really good.  The UH-7000 is also clearly the best headphone amplifier I have in my collection.  I just can't say enough good things about it, which is probably why I'll end up getting a second one.

pRME is simply PCI to AES. Ig gives him expandability, stability and pretty low latency. Personally I prefer the Lynx card and mixer but to each their own.

I had the RME Raydat, didn't really like RMEs mixer, I replaced My PTHD2 with a Macbook Pro I7 Sonnet Echo Express and so far one Lynx AES 16e will add another when I have the $$!
So far love it!! Only complaint is Lynx using the weird Dsubs!!