[linux-audio-user] Professional Sound Card Choices

I apologize to those on the ardour list that recieved this twice, I am working on separating out Ardour-user and Audio-user in my addy book, but so far apparently haven't done a good enough job. Ok so I am looking to upgrade my current workstation's sound card to help with a few problems I have been having with Ardour, along with a few other tweaks. Most of what I use in Linux for audio is Ardour and Rezound(Obviously along with Jack) and assorted LADSPA plugs. I am curious, is RME still about the best soundcard availiable on Linux with decent support? Any RME cards I should stay away from other than the fireface? I am currently looking at running a HDSP 96/52 or similar card, but if there are other options out there of similar or better quality I would like to know. Also as the network based jack protocols are still under development and arent very useful for me, I will be looking at running an ADAT line to a mac box to run VST plugins in, anyone see a problem with this? Yes I know fst and the like exists, but at the moment I am not sure that will fulfill what I need, as the plugins I have in mind will probably require hardware dongles, which I dont believe are supported yet. Seablade