Yes it is the best bang for your buck...does it produce professional quality - most definitely. An Apogee wouldn't necessarily be a step up, as the quality of converters are in the same range pretty much, however the Big Ben is a primo converter to have...the FireFace400 and 800 are really good deals though. They have made quite a name for themselves and just continually kill competition in their price range. The Octamic pres on both FireFace units are great, nothing wrong with them at all. The FireFace series does not require a sound card...it "is" the "sound card". It is a FireWire interface, you just plug up one single FW cable and you're set. The I/O is done within the interface, but using software that it comes with to digitally manage your routing options. Both units have 8 line outputs, and the other outputs vary between the two models. The 400 has two mic pres, the 800 has 4.
What you need to realize though is that you will need to get a seperate set of mic pres to go into either of the units...unless you only need two or four pres. Something like a Focusrite OctoPre with ADAT output, or PreSonus DigimaxFS with ADAT output would be ideal, giving you 8 channels of decent quality mic preamplification via ADAT optical connection. You could then use the 8 on the outboard unit, as well as the 2/4 pres on the 400/800 (respectively), totalling 10/12 channels of simultaneous I/O into your computer...again on one single FireWire400 cable.
~e.a
