I bought the Focusrite Scarlette 8i6o a couple fo weeks ago.
It's very good; very easy to use ONCE I set up the headphone routing in the mixer software that comes with it.
I was flummoxed that the headphone out on the box wasn't set up to use from the factory but apart from that little flutter everything seems to be very good.
The pres are much better than the ones I had in my previous interface (INCA 8I8O).
It was quite inexpensive as well.
I have a sep. presonus preamp (Blue Tube) & am happier with my little Behri Mic100 than with it.
I have the 18i6...for the price theres a hell of a lot of features...i run a vamp pro through the sdif and have
an octopre is my sights...thats 18 channels of recording altogether..
Only thing is if you run Ableton you cant really run its mixcontrol software (even though a Live Lite is bundled)...this means that no latency monitoring is more difficult as the Scarlett does have a little lag compared to my Delta. But this is only with Live as far as i can gather.
Also focusrite dont work using normal buffer sizes...128, 256, 512 etc...it works in milliseconds which dont fall exactly in these sizes. This only really matter when using some hardware, like a virus synth, that uses precise buffer sizes to communicate. The odd numbering can cause communication problems.
It also stops around 20ms...which for tracking is fine, but when i mix very large projects my quad core struggles,even with UAD and Liquidmix I still have to put my buffers past 20ms to stop crackles and pops. So it looks like Im keeping the Delta and only using the Scarlett for tracking.
One more thing...
the scarlett has a noisy headphone amp..lits not noticable at low volumes but to drive 250ohm cans i need a loud volume...my old omni i/0 has a very quiet amp in comparision, and and extra headphone output too.
So if you use Live, and hardware instruments that communicate through usb, or produce large mixes on a PC a few years old, then the focusrite, although a great package, may not be the best choice.