Interfaces

[Crash]

Bob has yet to buy so he is not locked into anything as of yet.

[FrankH]

Sorry....I'm not a big proponent of emoticons. Perhaps this: at the end of my remark might've helped.

I'm not familiar with the iMac's case or internal bus architecture. No PCI bus? No room?

To answer: yes and yes.

An iMac is stuffed into basically the backside of a monitor enclosure. All Power Macs manufactured since the beginning of 2008 have PCIe slots. The iMac has none at all. Beyond upping the RAM and dropping a different HD into it, all expansion on iMacs (up until recently) has been via USB2 and FW. The latest iMacs sport USB3 and Thunderbolt. FW is gone.

The HDSP 9652 is a lovely card...but PCI only. I had one for years until I bought a new Intel PowerMac....PCIe only.
I replaced it with a MOTU2480/424PCIe combo. And I did that because the RayDat was still on RME's drawing board at the time. I would have happily purchased one of those, had they been available. I love their stuff. However, the MOTU rig turned out to be quite reliable and trouble free. It prompted the UltraLite purchase for my iMac.

So, for the iMac, the only I/O recourse is something that utilizes USB, FW (older units) and Thunderbolt. There are scant few TBolt interfaces on the market but tons of USB and FW devices.

[Axeman098]

If Firewire is your primary option (USB just isnt worth a damn for more than 8 tracks reliably), I use and LOVE a pair of MOTU 896HD's. In my setup, I have them linked via Firewire (you can also use ADAT Lightpipe I believe) and running into a 1U Rackspace Server 2.4Ghz Quad-core Xeon with a large SATA drive running Sonar X2. Not only is it flawless recording, but the Pre's in the 896 are surprisingly nice and warm. Keep in mind, the 896HD is an older unit yes, BUT they were $1,000 Pre's back in the day, and they sound like it! Also, you can sync 2 of them to do 16 tracks @ 192Khz (sonic overkill but nice to be able to do for pristine recording). You can pick em up cheap all over Ebay.

If I have a choice, I'll go MOTU every time. Their stuff just WORKS...solid drivers, even on older legacy stuff like the 896HD. It just works everytime. No glitching, no crashing, I fire them up and they just GO. Also has 48v phantom power available on EVERY input!

[anyhorizon]

Which is why I mentioned the Apollo. Thunderbolt friendly along with the other candy.

Peter

[Crash]

Thanks for the input, I have decided the best option is to send Bob a link to here and let him look over what everyone has suggested.