Feature:
Nothing else even comes close. I use this in a live as well as studio environment. Having a full fledged mixer to record through is just the best way to go. I have used a friend’s firepod. The problem with the firepod is monitoring and small capacity. Sure you can connect headphones to an output and use the control panel software to set up monitoring inside the pod, but then you don't have any effects to provide to your singer. (singers love to hear themselves with re-verb). Or you can turn on monitoring on in the DAW software, but the delay really isn't acceptable in many situations. Even 5 milliseconds is audible. With the Helix you can just monitor through the mixer part and apply effects as you want with no noticeable delay and pure untouched audio dumping to the PC. Also, if you want you can switch the helix into a mode where the sound goes through the mixer (eq, faders, and effects) before it is dumped to the firewire on a per channel basis. I have found this to be unnecessary and not the best way to go but I can imagine needing this feature. So to all of those who are out there thinking about using a firepod or similar interface, I say buy this!!! .Having a mixer/firewire interface is definitely the way to go for me. If it was easier to do everything totally inside the computer, they wouldn't make control surfaces.

Quality:
I have had 2 Phonic boards and have not had a lick of trouble. This one is solid as a rock. I love it!

Value:
nothing else is even playing in the same game.

Desirability:
I wish it was some color other than brushed steel

Sound:
The helix 24 is an amazing product. There are a log of great effects, and the sound is very good. I am always hearing about the quality of Preamps on the Phonic products. I have tried quite a few different pre's on this by using the insert connection thus bypassing the on board pre's, none sounded any better, most worse. I would be happier if these preamps would produce more gain. I haven't found any specs about the actual gain on of these pre's but I estimate them to be somewhere around 50 db by comparing them to the other preamps. The sound always comes out very clean as long as you adjust the ASIO parameters with enough buffering to fit your situation. Overall, the mic and room are the only limiting factors in my getting amazing tracks with this thing, not the board or pre's If you want really great recordings go out and buy a couple of great mics, and treat your room acoustically. You can afford a lot of acoustic treatments if you take what you saved buying this board/interface instead of any other product which even has a fraction of this ones capabilities.

Ease of Use:
I have to gig this a little. I love that it is rack mountable, and use it all the time in a roll around rack. The problem is that when you put 16 channels into a rack mountable board, things get pretty close together. Some of the buttons ie group 3/4 send, main send, etc can be difficult for my fingers to get down to. I keep a pencil handy and use the eraser. Other than this.... awesome.

Support:
Very good. I had to ask a question to tech support once and I used email. I got a quick accurate response.

Overall:
Till it breaks. If I need more than simultaneous mics I will buy another and chain them.