Well if you need 8 inputs and 8 outputs and can afford it then for the money you wont get any better than this :
Apogee Emsemble
http://www.dv247.com/invt/31472/
The sound quality of the digital converters is totally excellent. Apogee are known all round the world to be some of the finest converters on the planet. Apogee are used by a lot of professional recording studios. I use to have
a rosetta 200 with firewire card and have to say the sound quality was above anything i've ever tried, it was just astonishing really. If you went for the emsemble then you could get a hardware effects processor like
the lexicon mpx-1 and connect it into the signal chain rather than use software effects which are noway near as good quality. You can get the lexcon mpx-1 now 2nd hand for about £250 which is an amazing price considering the superb quality that it is. Lexicon are also used in professional recordin studios and are amoung the top manfacturers for effects. I would have to say that they are 2nd best in the world only to eventide but then eventide effects processors cost in the region of £2,000 upwards.
By the way, its always better to have too many inputs and outputs than not enough. With outputs you could route 8 seperate channels of audio into a mixing desk and use the eq on the mixing desk which would sound better than the the eq built into your software sequencer. I use to use a soundcraft ghost and thye eq on that was so good it made the eq in cubase sound like it was a toy piece of software. But even getting a soundcraft sx mixer 2nd hand for about £200 you'd probably hear the difference.
This is all taking into account that you said you would spend a lot if need be, but hey if you dont wanna spend a lot and dont mind going for an interface thats not gonna be anywhere near as good sound quality then why not try this :
Pre-Sonus Firepod
http://www.dv247.com/invt/21253/
Obviously the sound quality isn't going to be anywhere near as good as the apogee but if you dont wanna spend the kind of money on an interface that the apogee costs then I would say its probably one of the nicest interfaces around for the money. But personally, myself, if I had
adam a7 monitors and a mac pro, i'd go for the apogee emsemble cos you have to remember that the sound quality is only as strong as the weakest link in your system so you could have £50,000 monitors and a £300,000 mixing desk but if you're audio interface costs about £300 then the sound quality is only ever gonna be as good as your audio interface. But hey its up to you. Which ever way you go, good luck.
