Got one of the first
Layla 3g's off the slow boat from China. Echo Audio is ten miles away from my house, so I'm not sure why they had to ship them ALL the way to China first, but alas...
I blindly went with the Layla on account of my very positive experience with the Mia, which ran wonderfully on a 733 PIII for three years. I was ready to pull the trigger and upgrade. So I built an AMD powered computer, Athlon 3200, Asus mother board, Nvidia chipset. (Strongly recommend building your own, BTW. It was my first time. Much easier than those who get paid to do that sort thing will admit. There is so much info on the web if you run into problems. I built a SMOKIN machine for around $700.) Anyways, the Layla3G has perfomred flawlessly for a several weeks. It sounds great. The converters are better to my ear. Everything is a tad cleaner, which you would expect from an upgrade of this calibur. I monitor on KRK V4s. I spent a good deal of time with them and the MIA. I knew the subtleties very well, and I could tell a signifigant difference with the LaylaG3. More detailed, bigger, smoother--I'm a happy dude.
Now, everyone probably wants to know about the two built in preamps. I haven't used them extensively, but have done both direct recording of a hollow body guitar and some vocal stuff with a SM57 and an Oktava 319. These are not mind boggling pres, but they are very clean and noise FREE. Very quiet. Very convenient to have right in front of you and on and ready to go. I think of them as my scratch pad pres, but I will use them in finished recordings. They are just fine. Again, very clean.
As for little stuff: The casing is brushed aluminum and sexy. It's a very handsome unit.
Two complaints: The headphone output is hardwired to only monitor whatever is being sent to the main outs, 1 -2. That's a drag if you're using 3-4 to, say, send to a tape machine because 1-2 go to your monitors. But, alas, this is easily worked around. Also, the GUI for the unit's mixer has not changed. Not a big deal and purely cosmetic. The mixer is easy to use and intuitive. It's just a little 1997 looking.
I would recommend it fully. For $500, it's a deal. Two plain jane clean pres is a bonus.