I just bought a D16 a few weeks ago. I looked carefully at the Akai, Roland and Fostex units as well. I found the D16 to be more intuitive than the Roland units (and several hundred dollars less). The Akai is fairly straightforward to use, but again the price diff. The Fostex unit was going to be my choice until the D16 price drop and rebate, which brought it within $150 of the VF16. For that much you get a much more flexible mixer with the Korg (for example, when you bring an effects return in on a channel in the Fostex, you completely lose the track assoc. with that channel, not so with the Korg, which was an important consideration for me). The VF16 does have the ADAT light pipe which is good if you are primarily tracking with it and then transferring to PC. With the Korg (and all the others mentioned) you get SP/DIF which means only two tracks at a time transfer. On the plus side, the Korg has mo' better f/x. Also was surprised at how useful that touchscreen actually is (I initially thought it to be gimmicky).
I have been very happy with my purchase.
Jon
