M-Audio ProFire 610 Firewire Audio Interface

Feature:
It came fairly no frills, just a driver CD, Ableton Live Lite 7 (which there are free updates to on Ableton's site) and a cable. That's more than i need, and i still haven't messed with Ableton, as i have Sonar 8.5, which runs flawlessly with this hardware.

Quality:
I waited until the Windows 7 drivers were released before installing and I am more than happy with this interface, and i have had NO crashes, no bug reports to file. Hardware is rock solid other than the plastic volume control knobs on the front. I replaced those with cool old guitar knobs though, so no worries if you have those or ten bucks to buy them. The reliability for long sessions is great. I would give it a 10 for price to performance ratio alone, but i am taking off two points for the cheapo knobs and the fact that this is NOT full professional quality and i don't want people who need a full studio environment for mixing to think this will give them all the ins/outs they really need.

Value:
For $399.99 i have found no better interface period. the sound quality and reliability have made this item an easy recommendation to all my friends who are just getting into music production. bundled software is nice and will undoubtedly make some djs very happy, but it's not tuned to my needs, so i didn't use it.

Desirability:
Most people with a cheap usb interface drool on mine, but can't seem to convince themselves it's worth it until they use it. Having had it, and working with other interfaces, i would say it is a sexy little beast, as it makes my buddies super excited to get one. Nice black finish, stylish blue leds, solid metal case. Gotta say it has great design.

Sound:
I get very accurate sound from this interface on all i've recorded with it. Vocals, guitar, direct line in with various basses, and with a very low noise floor (both by bit rate/depth and hardware) i can pick up very subtle dynamics with vocals, strings, or whatever i plug in, though i will say i usually use this to supplement the electronic music i work on. I run 64 bit audio at 96000khz and up to 70 tracks in a project, about half of those are stereo, so yeah, this card can handle some absurd i/o. current latency is 5.3ms. If anyone is having a hard time getting decent latency with 24bit 44,100 must have a completely crap system otherwise. I have Win7 64bit, AMD Phenomx4 processor and 3gigs of ram. Gonna upgrade system as soon as the amd 6 core bulldozer comes out, but with what this system can handle, it's still hard to justify, but hey, if you can get latency

Ease of Use:
. The GUI for the M-Audio Profire Control Panel could be annotated a bit more (Why is this or that option greyed out, ect..) but it is overall very well labeled, easy to navigate, create your own presets (for various recording session types)

Support:
M-audio's support is kinda slow, but their online knowledge base is so detailed you practically don't need it. I've had no issues with this product, just the Axiom i bought, so i haven't dealt with the interface support guys directly.

Overall:
I really like this interface on a lot of levels, but if i damaged or lost it, i would probably replace it with its big brother the Profire 2626.

Quality:
very solid build, although the knobs feel light and plasticish

Value:
hands down the best value for this pricepoint, the preamps on the other 400$ interfaces dont touch this.

Sound:
the pres on this thing sound pristine. they blow away the 410,mbox,and firebox, and line 6 ux2. its amazing that pres this good come in a box this cheap.

Ease of Use:
the drivers were buggy but its a pretty new product so ill give them some time to update it.

Overall:
id give it a 10 but ive only used 3 or so other interfaces and i know there are better ones out there. for the price and my needs nothing could beat this.