[Jonas Undrawing]

hmm.. yeah the E-mu 1820 looks good and solid. Seems very powerful with the effects and all the hardware run stuff. I do already have a great PCI / breakout card by Aardvark. Recorded Simon Says' live bits on it.

My beef with my current setup is that whenever i think about recording I think about setting up the mixer, getting levels for mics, running 4 15-meter cables to the other side of the house where my noisy ass huffing desktop is waiting with it's PCI / breakout setup.

Then, when i want to do a take, I follow the cables and run through the living room, kitchen, lobby, down the stairs, through the garage, into my room with the computer, press record, run back, tell everyone it's running, then we play. When song is finished, I repeat the trek to stop the recording.

Basically my recording gear is ultra-unportable and I am put off when i think about all the effort required to set it all up good and proper. And I need to remedy that.

I want a quieter, more portable setup. I want an ibook with a firewire audio interface (i've already bought a Maudio Firewire 1814 from ebay for US$400 so there's no stopping me). I want the option of being able to record awsomely without needing to be near power sockets. This way, setting up for recording will be far far easier (minimum 2 items: Laptop, interface box... then whatever mics and shit...), I'll be able to take my recording setup anywhere i want, my friends will like me more because of it... etc

Plus the Firewire 1814 has 2 independent headphone monitor ports! with independent volume knobs! And it has blue LEDS!