I bought a demo model of this unit which had no owners manual, so I called Aardvark's support and they immedately sent one out to me, no questions asked. I am glad it comes with Cakewalk now, when I bought it it came with Samplitude (which I don't use). The price has not gone down on these units in the past year and a half, I think it's actually gone up. The sound quality has been supurb and totally clear of extranious noise. My only real gripe with this unit is that it doesn't support Windows2K (which is inifinitely more stable than Windows98). The cable from the breakout box to the computer card is also very short which may mean you have to keep your computer close to your recording space. The problem with this is that you may wind up having to work at stifling the hum of your computer fans while you are trying to record. However, this last problem seems common to all the digital cards with breakout boxes. I put my computer in one room and run the cable for the breakout box under the closed door into the other room; not real elegant, but it works. The software interface is excellent too and is very easy to use, see Aardvarks site for some screen shots. The only DSP on this unit is Reverb, since I have a decent powerful computer and use plug ins instead, the lack of additional DSPs doesn't bother.