The Epia 5000 soundcard works at low latencies, but the sound quality is not very good. The M-series has "decent" onboard sound. I think it has less to do with the digital side than the analog... the M-series has more "oomph". I'd try the 600 MHz fanless version. It should be plenty of horsepower to do stomp box processing. It's been out a long time; everything should work right out of the box with any recent distro. Tell us how it goes, Florian! -Ben Loftis