Sean Darby wrote: I found with my Delta 44 card (which is great) that i couldn't quite get high enough levels recording guitar without some kind of pre-amp. mics definitely need pre-amping. Getting a mixer was my solution; its got mic pre-amps built in and there's plenty of gain available. I use the mixer in Ardour to mix the playback of recorded material. I use my desk mixer to monitor the playback from Ardour and the sounds as they are recorded. there is a latency advantage here, too. You don't have to make the software do _all_ the work! I seriously thought about getting a MG166, looks like a good bit of kit and i like Yam gear, but i just don't need all those channels! (ended up with a rather cheaper Behringer, which is fine). As R.Wolff already pointed out, yes it does. Or rather, that's what it is, mostly. If you get one of these look for the "envy24control" soundcard software. ( its in the alsa-tools-gui package in debian). hope this was some help. Best wishes, G.