Hi Guys, my buddy still has an Echo Mona and a Layla 24 and wants me to build him a new computer. When I built my current Q9450 system, I couldn't use my Mona on the G33 board, if I recall correctly because it didn't have the ICH7 southbridge: my other 775 system has that one, and there the Echo works. My question: who here has one of these Echo units working on a new motherboard and which one? I would love to be able to build him an Ivy bridge based system. Anybody out there with an i5 or i7? Any help GREATLY appreciated! Rico

Check my sig line for the specs of my DAW, and yes, I use a Echo Layla 24 with good results.  Obviously we can't do 192(kbps?), we top out at 96, but otherwise it performs quite well.  You might have difficulties finding the same MB.  As you know manufacturers are always upgrading and enhancing.

Hi Rico.

I've just built a new i5 DAW using a low end ASUS P8B75-M motherboard.  I read somewhere that this board still uses a 'native' pci slot for compatibility with legacy devices.  Most new boards seem to use PCI emulation which is not OK for PCI audio interfaces if I understand correctly.
 
Though I don't have a Layla24, my Layla 3G is absolutely smooth with this board and 16GB RAM.  Sonar X1 is happy with the Intel onboard graphics as well.  I haven't been able to get X2 to run as well as X1, but looking at the forum I think that is a problem with X2 and not the motherboard or Layla 3G.

The P8B75-M is still widely available AFAIK.

Cheers,

Phil.