m-audio delta 1010lt or emu 1820?

How audible, hrm, what you will notice is clearer imaging. I don’t know how to decribe it better. A buddy of mine has a 1010 and the Emu is clearer. It’s not like the difference between a home video and a DVD. It is a more subtle difference. Is it worth saving another few weeks and going without a few beers and pizzas… probably. Don’t get me wrong, the M-Audio stuff is fine stuff. You can record a dern good song using them. I am always the type who would wait a bit longer to get the best in class. It took me about, I don’t know, 5 years to break down and get another sound card, so I had plenty of time to compare and fret. The sound quality improvement was worth it to me. But, you may not have my needs. I am a pretty pop minded guy… clean audio, lots of transient material, crisp, tight are all things I look for. This gave it to me. Others want round and warm and syrup. Not to say the M-Audio will do that, my point is different strokes for different folks. My suggestion is to hit your local Guitar Center or whatever and drive them nuts playing with everything and seeing what you like.

I was just thinking that the cutting of channels was limiting until I realized something-My echo layla can do 16 channels with the ADAT lightpipe and such and is normally 96khz. But then it occured to me-it’s 96 khz with 10 channels (spdif) but when I “double” to 16 (since without spdif it’s only 8) I’m required to cut down to 48khz.

I thought of it as a limitation of lightpipe at first, but in reality it limits the entire system, so the e-mu isn’t that far off from what would have to happen anyway.