Hi Drew [ Note: due to the way the LAD mailing list mail server and my mail account interacts, this reply is unlikely to make it to the list. Feel free to forward it to the list if that's the case. ] I assume you're referring to 24 analog ins. Within a single unit that may be challenging. It depends on who you speak to. Certainly in the consumer realm it seems to be going out of favour. For semi-pro and professional audio however it appears to be carrying on for the moment (most likely because the bus architecture is so much better than USB for things like AV transport). This is evidenced by the manufacturers continuing to release new firewire-based devices. Over the next few years I expect thunderbolt interfaces to come to the fore (assuming the interface is adopted widely and quickly). However, there remains a huge number of very good firewire-based interfaces out there, and people will continue to want to use them for a number of years yet. As a result, I suspect that there won't be major issues attempting to obtain firewire host cards for the foreseeable future. This status is true, unfortunately. I should clarify that the "experimental" tag for the Pro 40 come about because FFADO has not received any information from the manufacturer about this device AFAIK. However, it is proving to be similar to earlier devices (excepting the DSP, which isn't relevant if all you're looking for is raw I/O) and it appears that progress is being made. Ultimately the slow progress is mostly due to a lack of manpower to work on the drivers. Admittedly this doesn't help your current quest. Note that I am not overly familiar with the Focusrite interfaces or the FFADO driver for them; to obtain more detailed information about them it would be best to head to the ffado-user and/or ffado-devel mailing list and post your queries there. Back a few years ago it was true; those working on FFADO were unable to get in contact with the right people at RME to facilitate the work on a driver. This changed a couple of years ago and as of FFADO 2.1.0 the Fireface-400 and Fireface-800 are almost fully supported (MIDI I/O and the FF800 TCO are the most significant omissions). In terms of getting 24 analog channels into the computer, you could use a FF800 with two 8-channel ADAT pre's of your choice. Again, it's not a single box with 24 inputs and it's a costly solution, but it should be workable. The RME UCX and UFX devices are currently not supported by FFADO. Adding the support for these is mostly dependent on getting physical access to sample devices. This is still being worked on (financial issues are proving to be a problem). Disclaimer: I work on the FFADO RME driver. Regards jonathan