TabSel

wruess
...dump my Presonus 1818VSL in a heartbeat if the 18i20 had effects in the Mix Control software.

Why? What are your experiences with the 1818VSL? How do you use it?

I use the 1818VSL (in conjunction with a Focusrite Octopre II) for live sound and recording, using Win7 64 laptop and Sonar X3.  It works OK, BUT after more than two years, Presonus hasn't ever upgraded the VSL software interface which is primitive. AND this unit is not compatible with USB3, and several newer Win and Mac computers.  No indication from Presonus that any upgrade is in the works.  Consequently, I wouldn't recommend anyone buy one without carefully doing homework to make SURE it will work with your system
 
This is unfortunate, since the 1818VSL is a truly unique item; not sure there's anything else on the market that does exactly the same job, esp with 8 mic pre's and nice price point

Cactus Music
I wish there was a way to not have to use the mixer and go directly. The Mix Control looks like it will be useful when tracking a full band, but for one person it is not needed. 

 
Just click the Routing Preset button, then DAW tracking. Then you are done. You can forget about it. Use the LED's and pots on your interface for levels.
 
Focusrite's rock, the sound is great. With mixcontrol you have the flexibility of zero latency monitoring, or you just can keep it simple once it is set up correctly (and not bother with it). Mix Control is easy to use and makes totally sense once you've studied the manual and youtube videos.

Sanderxpander
 
Whatever you may feel for your purposes, I do not, personally, find this a minor issue. You seem to want to pretend it's insignificant and that is unfair.

 
It's a minor issue in my book. We don't have to agree on every thing. How about we agree to disagree without being enemies? Why is it unfair that I see this as an insignificant matter? 
 
With decent hardware, a good configured system, and a MOTU unit, typically, monitoring effects using plug ins in a DAW, wont be noticeable at a 64 samples ASIO buffer size or lower. With my system (which I've had over 4 years) and my UltraLite-mk3, I experience no noticeable latency monitoring effects in SONAR X1D (getting X3 next month.)
 
If you don't have decent computer hardware, an optimized configured system, and an audio interface with drivers that perform good at low latencies (32-96 samples), I can see where it would be a significant problem if your audio interface didn't support recording a dry signal while monitoring with the audio interface's hardware effects.
 
But make no mistake that it is a reality that this can be done using plug in effects in the DAW. This is a reality, and I am not pretending. Since I can do it in SONAR, it's no big deal if my audio interface doesn't support recording a dry signal while monitoring with it's hardware effects.
 
I've been around here for more than 10 years. I've picked up useful knowledge from users such as Jim Roseberry and Scott from ADK, and other helpful forum users. In this thread, Jim just dropped some good revelation reports about two new audio interfaces he has tested. Users here will do well to take note of what he said. Jim is a gem of DAW knowledge, and a DAW expert. When he posts, I read attentively. I would not have the stable and capable DAW system I have today, if it were not for some of the helpful tips he shared in these forums, along with helpful posts made by some other forum members and Cakewalk staff.
 
Through all of this, someone will pay attention, use the knowledge they acquired in these forums, and ascertain that some of us older forum members do know a few things. 

Sanderxpander
Thank you for your long elaboration on my sentence "you can't use the channel EQ and compression without recording them", I thought in the context of our discussion it was entirely clear what I meant, but apparently not. Whatever you may feel for your purposes, I do not, personally, find this a minor issue. You seem to want to pretend it's insignificant and that is unfair.

With regards to latency through the DAW, I just recorded a singer on Monday who was really sensitive and kept insisting something was "weird" about her sound when I let her monitor through the DAW. First she insisted there was a tiny delay or reverb (ASIO buffer at 5ms), then she said something was indescribably "weird" (ASIO buffer down to 4 and finally 2ms). This didn't go away until I switched to direct monitoring from my card's mixer. There's a reason they still make cards with fx DSPs.

 
Hi Sander,
 
When you're monitoring thru software-based EFX/processing... and you have the ASIO buffer size set to 5ms, that's not telling the whole story.
In this scenario, you're dealing with "round-trip" latency (latency on both input and output).
So when the driver's ASIO buffer size is set to 5ms... you have the sum of the following:

• The ASIO input buffer is 5ms
• The ASIO output buffer is 5ms
• The latency of the A/D and D/A converters
• The driver's safety buffer (what Behringer call the Streaming Buffer)

Thus, you're actually dealing with significantly higher than 5ms latency.
I'd guestimate the actual round-trip latency to be 12-14ms.
That's getting pretty sluggish... and could certainly affect the performer.
 
An easy way to test the X32's audio interface:
Load up the Sonar demo project (good for testing/comparing performance)
Open the X32's driver control panel... and adjust the ASIO and Streaming buffers to their smallest setting.
Go into Sonar's Preferences>Audio>Driver Settings and check the listed round-trip latency.
Make note of that figure.
Setup the Sonar demo project to loop continuously (so you don't have to keep restarting the transport).
Leave the X32's driver control panel open... and look for any dropped samples.
 
Whoever designed the X32's ASIO control panel did a great job.
Simple, extremely flexible, and it reports any dropped samples.
I wish the X-UF worked as well as my MOTU 896HD.  It would have saved me $900.  
All that said, if you don't ever monitor thru software based EFX/processing... and you don't play virtual instruments, the onboard audio interface is perfectly fine.
 
Right at this moment, only the X-UF and X-USB interface cards are actually available for purchase.
The ADAT, DANTE, and MADI interfaces should be available soon.
I would have preferred DANTE (if round-trip latency is low enough) as that would have been less than half the cost... or MADI (as I could have gotten an RME MADI-face).

This was not with the X32, Jim, it was with my 1820M.
I knew you would mention the round trip buffer. However, even using the minimum possible settings, the effect was noticeable by the performer, not as a delay but as something "off". I just checked and minimum roundtrip latency at 44.1K for me is 6ms. I would normally agree that you can monitor through the DAW fx and regularly do this when I'm recording guitar, or playing VSTs.
I'm running a pretty current i7 3770 with a PCI based E-MU card. I know there are better drivers than the E-MU ones but sorry, my system is no slouch. Sometimes people are just very sensitive. That's why it is useful to have a card with some DSP based fx on it.

I'll leave it at that for now, we don't seem to be getting anywhere and the point has been made clear to the OP.

Sacalait
Does anyone have experience with the UA Apollo?

I have been using an Apollo QUAD for the past two years. For the first 6 months, I was using it with my 2011 Mac Mini (via FW800) with REAPER x64, as the Win drivers had not been released yet. I got the Thunderbolt I/O card later in 2012 and it was plug and play and super stable with my Mac Mini. In November of that year, UA released the Win 7 drivers along with 64bit UAD plug-ins, so I then installed it on my rather old 2006 Core 2 Duo (3Ghz) DAW using Win 7 x64 (SP1) and began using it with SONAR X1/X2 x64. It has been working perfectly (solid and stable) for me with SONAR using the recommended Sonett Allegro FW800 PCIe card. The 64bit audio drivers & 18/24 audio I/O sets up quite nicely with SONAR with incremental ASIO buffer settings from 32 to 4048 samples. 
 
I just recently (this past month) built a new DAW (i7 4770k using an ASUS Z87 Deluxe/Quad MB). I wanted a robust MB that would last me through the decade. Plenty of expansion (7-PCIe 2.0/3.0 slots, 12-USB 2.0/3.0, etc) and the coup de grace.........dual Thunderbolt 2.0 ports (20Gbps per port)! Anyway, the reason I mention this is I currently have my Apollo QUAD working over Thunderbolt on Win 8.1 x64 with SONAR X3e x64! Everything is working as expected and though the audio drivers are still using FW800 over TB, I am getting 7.6ms RTL (as noted in SONAR audio settings) @ 64 samples ASIO. UA has not announced official Windows Thunderbolt support, but I just wanted to mention, that with a few tweaks (BIOS/OS), you can get it to work using a compatible TB enabled MB. For me, I much prefer using TB than FW if given the choice. Although both work as expected using the Apollo.
 
FYI, UA just released the Apollo Twin (@ Winter NAMM 2014) with PCIe audio drivers over TB and the reported RTL is around 4.5ms. UA announced that PCIe audio drivers will be released for the rest of the Apollo series (Apollo, Apollo 16, Apollo Realtime Rack) in the 2nd quarter of 2014. So we can expect even better RTL's in the future. Although, I must say playing my softsynths (True Pianos, Kontakt, etc) and amp sims @ 64 samples feels real good to me as it is. 
 
Of course, as you probably already know one of the main Apollo features is the real time UAD processing. Which I must say after having used for countless hours over the past two years for recording/monitoring is quite impressive to experience first hand. Especially with the quality of the UAD plug-ins on the front end with no perceptible latency. About as close to using the actual audio hardware in the box as you are going to get. The addition of the Unison Technology on the Apollo's takes preamp modeling to a whole new level. As Apollo users, we got the Unison Tech firmware update and the UAD 610B Pre Amp emu as a free update. 
 
There are very few products that I have ever purchased that I can say I am more satisfied and impressed with two years later than my Apollo. If it was lost or stolen I would not hesitate to purchase another one. Especially now that UA is giving away free, the Thunderbolt I/O card (499 value) with each Apollo purchase until June 30th. If you do get an Apollo, go for the QUAD as the extra DSP is well worth having when you need it.
 
Cheers,
 
Billy Buck
 

Thanks for the report Billy Buck!  I'm getting very close to making a decision on a new interface- currently using the VS700.  The Apollo has been getting a lot of my attention lately- especially after picking up a UA LA610 channel strip last year.  ...didn't mean to hijack the OP but it is about a new audio interface with effects.

I recommend making sure you know going rate for the UFX and UCX. If you go here and have them email you the price you can get a good sense of what the fair going rate is.
 
http://proaudiotoys.com/advanced_search_result.php?x=0&y=0&keywords=ufx
 
I have a UCX and I love it. I've had it for two years. I would point out that you will need some additional Pres probably if you go with the UCX. I use the RME Quad Mic Pre when I want more inputs. The UCX alone works great for two people together working out tunes. If you want to record a band you'll need additional Pres. You can record up to 18 tracks with the UCX, so it's not a trivial device but you'll need other hardware to record that many.
 
You should know it can scale. You can run up to 3 UCX devices together.
 
Also, it comes with TotalMix as you know but I haven't seen anyone mention RME DigiCheck which also works with it. Both are amazing tools.
 
For recording bands, you can save all your settings so you can bring the up for a given club you play regularly for example. So you set your EQs, compressors and sends for Verb for your live gig and save it. You can save it as the club name and bring it up next time you visit the same club. You can also copy it to use it for a new club.
 
You can easily mix monitor and main mixes separately. You can group controls. You can send the monitor mix to the mains during the sound check with a single click.
 
I tend to run the output for the mains to a compressor with a gain nob so that I a physical nob I can twist if I need a quick physical way to turn down, but this isn't necessary if you have a touch screen or a quick mouse hand.
 
I don't have any regrets about my UCX purchase.

The UCX gets hot. If you want something for a rack, get the UFX. I sit my UCX next to a quad mic pre from RME on top of my compressor beside my desk.
 
When I go out, I throw it in a bag. You have to be careful with the clock port on the back of the unit when you carry it around.
 
The UFX would be safe in a rack. the UCX is compact and really cool, but you might have trouble keeping it safe on the road unless you dedicate a full U to it.

Wow.  Awesome.  Thanks for all the ideas and tips, guys.  There's a lot to consider here. 
 
There is also one constraining factor - I am going to want to have two hardware devices connected through S/PDIF, so unless the X32 has a S/PDIF card or module option it  is off my list for now (Damn).
 
The RME, 828x, and the UAD Apollo all have S/PDIF and ADAT ports -
RME and MOTU say their units will configure for 2X S/PDIF I/O (by configuring 1 ADAT port to S/PDIF format) - not sure about the Apollo yet.  Anyone know which interface works best with two S/PDIF I/O channels running?