Beepster

aleef
yeah it sucks that PCI is getting phased out. The 24/96's are solid work-horses. There is hope! if the Layla is still going strong, Asus and Gigabyte still have 2011 X79 MB's with 1 pci slot. Go ahead and get a mid/pro level preamp first man!! all you need is just one good signal chain. outboard control will always be better than software control.

I bought a high end ASUS MOBO because it had a PCI slot. Unfortunately I was not aware of the bridge issue when I did. Still a very nice board and I can hook up pretty much anything imaginable but that one little thing reduced the stability of my Layla. Ticks me off because I really did try to do my homework when choosing the board.
 
It still works after some system tweaks but if I push it too hard it craps out. :-/

Beep in this day in time, you should not be  crappin out. Why are you pushing it?? even the hardest of rock has a unwritten rule.

@aleef... When I first installed Sonar (X1 Pro) on my freshly built (but untweaked) system while using the Layla just adjusting PC parameters caused dropouts/crackling. Something was definitely screwing up. Once I got the 18i6 things were much smoother and after some optimization the Layla seemed to work better but still wasn't as stable as the 18i6 so I just didn't bother with it anymore.
 
I'll be doing a complete overhaul of the system now that I know (much) more than I did back then so maybe it'll be more useable but the 18i6 is my go to. It's sounds better anyway and it's just me fiddling with stuff at home. I'd be more concerned about it if I was trying to record bands.
 
Sadly I think if I was using something other than Sonar I probably wouldn't have so many problems. My gear is solid but I will have to continue tweaking to get it to play nice with the DAW.

I would not drop an audio interface because of a lack of modern features.
If it's performing well, keep it - just ad a dedicated pre-amp or two to your setup.

I run an Echo Layla 3G here and it works great! I too built my own machine with an ASUS MB but have never had any problems with the soundcard. The only problem I have is knowing at some point I will replace the Layla and I don't see any viable alternatives other than maybe Rednet which will be very costly. Nobody is making PCI or even many PCIx interfaces any more, Firewire is becoming extinct, and USB is nothing I would ever consider....I still have a Pentium 3 450mhz running Linux...but it's a scsi 3 system. It seems whenever there is an excellent protocol it will be replaced with something cheaper with less functionality ;)
 
Bill

Cookie Jarvis
I run an Echo Layla 3G here and it works great! I too built my own machine with an ASUS MB but have never had any problems with the soundcard. The only problem I have is knowing at some point I will replace the Layla and I don't see any viable alternatives other than maybe Rednet which will be very costly. Nobody is making PCI or even many PCIx interfaces any more, Firewire is becoming extinct, and USB is nothing I would ever consider....I still have a Pentium 3 450mhz running Linux...but it's a scsi 3 system. It seems whenever there is an excellent protocol it will be replaced with something cheaper with less functionality ;)
 
Bill

If you intend to run it on the same system and are only concerned the Layla itself might gack out you can pick up PCI 3Gs on Ebay for peanuts these days. If your current breakout box is still good then you could daisy chain them. If it's just the box or card conking out seems quite a few people are selling either component separately. I would mind picking up an extra box because with some maintenance my old system would be fine for tracking.
 
On a new system PCIe should be even better than PCI and quite a few companies offer them.

Fond memories of our old Layla 24/96 all the way around. That interface was really the beginning of the digital end of our business almost 15 years ago. Swapped it for an AudioFire Pre 8 about 5 years ago and it still sits in the mix room to this day, working without a hitch.
 
Echo always made the best drivers, even when they were writing them for Mackie products. I don't know that I would say Firewire is becoming extinct however, perhaps for the consumer end of audio interfaces but, for the pro market, there are many manufactures that still embrace the interface ( Presonus, Mackie, Steinberg, MOTU, Avid, Focusrite, Universal Audio, ect ) Your not likely to find any version of Firewire on a MOBO that will work well with most manufactures products anyway so, you will be buying a separate PCIe adapter board and those are widely available.
 
Laptops/Tablets are definitely all USB but if your transitioning from a Layla 24/96, It doesn't sound as if that's where your headed. While it may be possible to do multi-track audio on a phone/tablet, it's not very practical once the novelty wears off lol!!

About Firewire :)
 
Its far from over !...The following PCIe-to-FireWire 800 adapter cards are qualified for use with Apollo and UAD-2 Satellite on Windows 7 64-bit systems.
 
Till Thunderbolt !

Cookie Jarvis
Nobody is making PCI or even many PCIx interfaces any more

MOTU do a line of audio interfaces that use either their PCIe-424 or PCIX-424 card.  They are the 2408 Mk3, The 24I/O and the HD192.  I personally run the 2408 Mk3 and the 24I/O in my studio - very stable interfaces.
 
The other cool thing about the MOTU gear is that the original 2408 from about 15 or 20 years ago still runs on the newer PCIe-424 with the latest drivers.  So they have got around the obsolescence problem by making old rack units compatible with the newer cards.

My Echo Gina3g works beautifully with my hardware listed below in my signature.

Great insight and info guys.  Thank you very much.
 
Dan