I was thinking of getting
the lexicon pcm80, the older model of the current pcm81 (the pretty top of the line multieffects box). Of course they have the surround processors which are even nicer, but I am betting that the older model sounds just as good as the new one.
I love when apogee puts out new gear and all the studios sell last years model for nickels on the dime. Honestly unless you actually use 192 khz bit rates, then what is the point. I use 24bit 44khz even though I have dual 120gig harddrive and could get 160gig harddrives for only $100 that are seagate barracuta's from
www.pricewatch.com which are even in sata configuration, I still barely hear a noticable difference which justifies the 10x increase in disc space.
I would love someone to come out with a sequencer that didn't use the retarded wav or aiff formats. Those formats are from the dark ages god, it's is like using the goddamn 286 processor with a 5 gig harddrive and 50megs of ram. I mean what is the probelm? We have new processors, cd players, dvd technology, new memory, even now new pci busses that pull 20x more information, but the morons in the audio department can't design a new format that has 10x the sound data and the same file size or less. Ridiculous, sorry.... I already have so many harddrives in my computer, I don't need to run a server to make music lol.
And a side note, buying new musical gear that is $$$ is the worse investment ever. Musical equipment losses 50-60% of its value after the first year, that is even worse then a car. Check it out,
a motif 8 from yamaha $3000 new, now it is worth $1600, $2000 if you are lucky. Honest to god, emu mo phatt synthesizer $800 new, next year $300 or I even saw $200. The music equipment scene is all about HYPE, and that is all. Technology today is at a limit where almost everything is the same. Sorry Cubase Sx2 to Cubase Sx3 is a joke, they went to 2.2 then skip to 3.0? The features in Sx3 are trivial to Sx2, I will never upgrade. I love how people still use Cubase VST, the technology game is a joke. I have a 2.4 ghz p4 with 1 gig of ram, I have no need to upgrade for years to come, it is so ridiculously fast with almost 0 latency due to the best memory on the market.
The funny thing about synths, rather then computers is computers break after 3 years, like hp products and etc. Honestly, all computers now are designed to break after 3-4 years, and they do. At least synths don't break down after 3-4 years, actually they can last 30-40 years. But unless you are living in cloud 9, you might have noticed that you espon printer falls apart after 4 years, or you motoralla phone purposely had a crappy antenna when the economy sucked for extra revenues, etc.