Definately look into the 880 a bit more. I could be crazy but you can upgrade the 880 to nearly 880EX standards. I have an 880 that I did just that with. It now has a 2 gig hard drive in it, and I added the effects card to boot. The card runs a mild $250. But it offers two seperate channels worth of effects. Now I admit that if you have both effects (effects1 and effects2) being used, then thats it. Whatever effect you have the first processor using (example reverb) then thats going to be locked. Thats to say if you tell the machine to assign the processor to tracks one two and three.. they all get the reverb. and if you try to switch the effect to say chorus then you end up with chorus on all the channels. But, and this is a but and handy but, if after you record the reverb on one two and three and you want more effects added, bounce the tracks. In otherwords play back the "effected tracks" and record them to say... track four, hit save. and Pow. There they are mixed with reverb and locked. You are free to use the effects channel again. Takes some time, takes an ear, once you mix it down, it is mixed down.