downgrading interfaces

USB interfaces sucking is a thing of the past as far as I can tell. The reason it seemed that way is just because some companies released shitty USB interfaces for a while. The packets vs stream thing isn't a shortcoming in USB, it just means that hardware developers need to keep the difference in mind when developing.

If it were me, I'd either get a Focusrite Scarlett, or grab a firewire pci card (just depending on the amount of money I wanted to spend at the moment).