Hi all, im new here and i was hoping someone could help me out.

I am currently looking for a new extenal soundcard, preferably firewire to use with my studio setup.

At the moment I have a MacBook with 2Ghz core 2 Duo and 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM on OS X 10.5.4, currently running Reason 4.0.1 and Logic Pro 8 with the possibility of running various other programs. I have various vst's or (AU's) The main one being N.I's Massive (ideally this card needs to deal with at least 20 channels of this with a good few plug-ins on top). Also i need it to be able to move with me when i purchase a more powerful machine aswell as move with me on location.

I was looking at the Edirol FA-66 wih a Firewire interface but my friend has just rescently purchased the FA-101 and it seems to be more then up to the task, and im very tempted but i have no real need for 10 outputs.

Is the FA-66 a more suitable choice? is the only difference between the two the outputs or are does the FA-101 process the information faster then its lesser sibling?

Any help would be greatly appreciated and if anyone has any recommendations i would be happy to hear them

Thanks

I work with an FA-66. It's a decent box. If you're using modern condensers the preamps have enough gain. If you make use of all it's resources, you can have up to 6 input and outputs. Most people don't mix SPDIF with analog, so typically you'll use 4 in/out.

One caveat (and I imagine this applies to the FA-101) is that the supposed balanced front line TRS jacks are routed through the mic pres! Don't run balanced line feeds through them, they'll clip well before you hit digital zero. For line feeds your only option is the unbalanced line inputs in the back, or SPDIF.

thanks for that will take it on board