yeah, the 44 isn't stackable though, the 66 is. you have to have the digital i/o on the card, which the 66 has and the 44 doesn't. i went back and forth with m-audio support on this one, they said sometimes it's possible and sometimes not, but if you do get it to work, they don't always clock up correctly.
i'd rather just avoid the headache and go with the 1010.
and yeah, price sure has come down - when i bought it, it was over $300! now you can get them on ebay for half that.
I'm looking to spend about $300 for the rackmount version, that's around what they're going for on Ebay. If someone wants to be a kind soul and sell one for even less....