Guys. Don't skimp on the convertors. You guys want to get this thick full deep huge soundstage and you're gonna cut out the one ingredient that's responsible for that, and that's the AD/DA convertors? I hear some of the sound-samples on this site and many of them sound "closed", "over compressed", lacking high end detail, and the bottom is either muddy or not really there. No offense, the music is great, but the mix, not so much. I'm on a budget too, but you can't skimp here.
Someone said earlier that most of these manufactures use the TI chip. THEY'RE CHEAP! It causes jitter in the samples, and the preamps in these units are horrible.
You're going to buy a good DI, have a great guitar, great amps and amp sims, and then the one thing that converts your signal from analog to digital, the one piece that allows digital to sound good, you're gonna buy the worst pieces of junk on the market?
Forget almost all the names you've heard on this boards (at least in there stock versions, and go look at these.
Look under the modifications page. The might mod the unit that you have (Focusrite, RME, MOTU, Digi,, etc, etc) and they offer a micro clock bundle. If you've never heard of these guys, they're making stuff that the top LA studio are using. Their high-end stuff is at the top, in league with Lynx (or above) and Mytek. But you can get a modded lower end 3rd party for a good deal. I have their modded MOTU 896HD with Micro Clock and it's very nice). I'm putting out stuff that reviles big label releases (in part due to this), and I have good gear, play well and have a great engineer.
http://www.blacklionaudio.com/content.php?p=29
You won't regret it.
Cheers
