I use a Cakewalk (Edirol/Roland) UA-25 EX and I really love it. As I bought it for mobile use I decided to buy an USB interface. Otherwise I think I would have bought a PCI device like the M-Audio Audiophile 2496. The UA-25 EX works just out of the box with e.g. Ubuntu or AVLinux. It has got two XLR/TRS combo jacks with phantom power, 24bit/96khz quality (simplex) or 24bit/48khz (duplex).On my new system I use AVLinux and I can go as low as 5 ms latency without issues. This experience is based on projects with about 6 stereo channels and some simple plugins (like reverb). If you’ve got a project that is more complex and you want to make sure that the UA-25 EX is good enough for that project, you may send me your project and I will do some testing with it.
The decision may depend on what you plan to do. If you want to record more than two channels at once, the UA-25 EX will not be your friend (it’s a two channel device).
To answer your question about mics: This is a very complex topic that can’t be answered with a few sentences (and the answer depends on what you are going to do). You just can’t compare a Rode NT1A against a Shure SM58 (or Beta 58A). These ones uses completely different techniques and they aren’t made for the same goal. The Shure is a good mic for “on stage use”. E.g. it produces low feedback and it doesn’t break if you accidentally drop it. The Rode NT1A can only be used in a (home) studio. It is a large diaphragm mic and it’s very sensitive. On a stage you would hear a foot tap that’s 10 meters away. That kind of mics are the best solution for studio purposes if you plan to record voice or some acoustic instruments like a guitar. It makes you sound “big”. But: This doesn’t mean that you can’t use a Beta 58A in a studio. As I said, it depends…
@seablade
I thought about the fact that this post is old. But I went through these old posts on audio interfaces when I was buying one, and I suppose others do too. So I thought new information might be relevant.
I know it is heresy to suggest using a built-in sound chip. I actually bought the Fast Track Pro, and spent a good bit of time comparing it, trying to find a reason not to return it and I couldn’t. I wrote a bit more about it in the thread “Budget USB Interface for Ardour?” In particular, I recorded silence with both of them and listened to it greatly amplified and looked at the rms level in audacity. I recorded acoustic guitar with a big diaphram mic from several centimeters, with the guitar at a moderate volume. At a reasonably strong playback gain, I could hear no noise with either interface, only guitar. If I then increased the playback gain greatly in the silent parts of this acoustic recording, the preamp noise completely swamped anything else. I also tried to cause some change in electrical noise, when recording silence (ie, with no input, or preamp gains at zero, so I had some chance of hearing it) I waved the input cables around, clicked the mouse, keyboard, moved gui windows, etc. I then turned the replay gain up so the noise was loud, but heard absolutely no change from any of those things (I wish I had written down the numbers, but he noise level with the preamps off was much smaller, maybe a couple of orders of magnitude in amplitude, compared to having the preamps at a level sufficient to close mic a guitar with a large diaphram condenser mic) I also couldn’t hear any difference toggling between two guitar tracks recorded with the two interfaces.
I think it might be interesting to do other audio tests, like record sine waves and so forth to check distortion from the DSP. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the HDA chip is worse. I’d actually like to get my hands on another interface to try some more things. Maybe even just using both interfaces normally for a while, something might show up. But the m-audio also has drawbacks. It’s difficult to get the drivers working, and sometimes goes into a crackly mode and needs to be restarted (in MSWin too), etc. I couldn’t justify keeping it if I couldn’t identify a single advantage.
I know the OP wanted preamps and 48V power. But the behringer 802 mixer with preamps and phantom power that I used is 58 USD on amazon, while the FTP is 165 USD.