I am looking at this as an interface- the guy at sweetwater said this is about the best converters in a unit under 800$.  It is hard to go wrong with RME, the I/O is basic but will work for me starting from very little in the way of projects to semi-professional quality work.  anyway what is the opinions of all the smart people here?

I don't have RME, but it is highly recommended.  If I could afford an RME, I'd have one.

I have an RME UCX and I love it. I wanted an interface with the best converters available without breaking the bank. Get the Babyface.......

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Beware of the headroom on the Babyface. I had one and sold it. +4dBvu comes into it at -14 dbfs if I remember correctly. Could even be -12 dbfs. Transients may give you clipping problems if your not careful. It sounded okay and I thought it was great until I gained more experience and then took the plunge into a Lynx card. There are better converters/interfaces close to that price. It might be worth saving for something better. Peace...

RME Babyface works fine for me. Read reviews there at Sweetwater.

The Babyface is also automatic input. If your signal is too low or something like that it has gain to use but it is better to have pre-amps and all of that on any audio interface to use. The TotalMixFX is for routing of the output signal at which it excels over others, but the FX (reverb or echo) can only be added to the output signal (listening) or loopbacked to use to make another track with the FX on it. Big manual you may not understand at first but stick with it, explains everything, but the inputs you do not adjust, when you adjust TotalMixFX and that computer program you are adjusting your output to listen to.

The Babyface is an excellent unit.
Both sound quality and ultra low-latency performance
You won't find better converters at that price point.

Total round-trip latency at the 48-sample ASIO buffer size/44.1k is 4.9ms
That's excellent.
If you're using a well configured i7 based DAW, you can sustain substantial loads glitch-free at that 48-sample ASIO buffer size.

I've been a long-time user of the M-Audio Delta 2496 (a PCI card). Are I correct in assuming that the RME Babyface, although a USB connection, will deliver better sound, better stability and lower latency than the Delta 2496? I'm a little wary of changing from an internal card to a USB interface, but perhaps I'm thinking of the early days of USB version 1, when the USB interface didn't have sufficient bandwidth.

I've been a long-time user of the M-Audio Delta 2496 (a PCI card). Are I correct in assuming that the RME Babyface, although a USB connection, will deliver better sound, better stability and lower latency than the Delta 2496? I'm a little wary of changing from an internal card to a USB interface, but perhaps I'm thinking of the early days of USB version 1, when the USB interface didn't have sufficient bandwidth.

 
Hi Dean,
 
With a fast well-configured DAW... the Babyface will allow you to run heavy loads (glitch-free) at a 48-sample ASIO buffer size.  Round-trip latency is 4.9ms at 44.1k.  That's excellent performance.
The Babyface isn't cheap, but it's exactly what you'd expect.  RME quality in a small footprint.
Fidelity is superior to the 2496
 
The Babyface is FAR superior to first generation USB1.1 audio interfaces.