Hi Manning

Dunno what you want to spend or what you consider "high end". But the MOTU audio interfaces seem to have pretty decent converters, and are built like a tank. MOTU has a track record of releasing drivers for their interfaces from many years ago, and will repair them if they break. But they do not break very often as far as I know.

I have the original 2408 from more than 10 years ago, and it still works good as new, but the version 1 only had 16 bit converters. However, even the 16 bit converters were pretty quiet and linear from my testing.

Most of the MOTU gadgets will run standalone.

The PCI-card-interfaced 2408 MK3 is the latest incarnation of my box, and my old box will do most of the tricks of the newest box, except the newest box has better converters and probably other bells'n'whistles.

http://www.motu.com/products/pciaudio/2408/mdm.html

If the 2408 isn't connected to the computer, you can push front-panel buttons to route any of analog in/multitrack digital in/spdif to any of analog out/multitrack digital out/spdif. For years I would run the 2408 controlled by a Mac, cross-connected with 8 channel ADAT digital i/o on a PC audio card, and the mixer, and the DAT machine, so I could route audio from/to anything thru the 2408. It runs just as happily hosted on a PC.

It would still do that trick today, but I 'temporarily' have the studio torn apart awaiting refurbish.

The 'higher end' MOTU firewire interfaces will also run standalone, though they don't have as much overkill in input/output number of connections.

MOTU sells a couple of smaller iinterfaces that may not have as many standalone bells'n'whistles, dunno.

James Chandler Jr
http://www.errnum.com/