i worked with the m box for a year. it is a good little device for specific things. the focusrite pre amps are good. it has a phantom power so that part is taken care of.there is one little kink the folks at digidesign have not worked out yet, if you are doing straight recording for like say 15 minutes , there is this loud clicking noise that will start recording onto the track. it is downright frightening. i contacted digidesign and they have not been able to fix it. the best way is to keep it on auto save and close out and start every 15 minutes, which seems frustrating, but can be worked with. otherwise pro tools is an amazing program for editing and doing some good recordings, even if you were doing all of your entire hip hop projects with the m box, it would still sound incredible. as far as vocals, the mic makes all the difference. once you got good sounds, the sky is the limit. i am looking to get a used one for a little less because i work alone at this moment. if 2 inputs are all you need then definitely check it out.