I'm using the old 1616 pci with the unofficial W7 drivers.  When I got this W7 computer I had a little problem installing them.  Later, after wiping my HD and doing a clean W7 reinstall, driver installation went very smoothy.  In both cases the unit and drivers are stable and work well.
 
If I were going to get a new one, I'd be look elswhere.  EMU has not seemed to ibe nterested in making drivers for their products since Vista, and they seem to have a bad attitude, and there have been no upgrades to thier PatchMix software (I havn't checked for a few months), and I thingn the support forum is now defunct.  I'd go with a company that loves and supports their customers, and E-MU is no longer that.  Just my opinion.  

That's one thing I hated about the EMU, the PITA input knobs! They are very difficult to get just the right level. Although, Using a compressor on the input in the mixer section does help.

I hope you don't mean using a compressor in Patchmix.  Patchmix occurs AFTER the digital conversion, so if your signal clips, no amount of compression will help.  If in doubt, keep your levels conservative.  If you're recording in 24-bit, you'll have enough headroom anyway.

Guitarpima


That's one thing I hated about the EMU, the PITA input knobs! They are very difficult to get just the right level. Although, Using a compressor on the input in the mixer section does help.

MondoArt


I hope you don't mean using a compressor in Patchmix.  Patchmix occurs AFTER the digital conversion, so if your signal clips, no amount of compression will help.  If in doubt, keep your levels conservative.  If you're recording in 24-bit, you'll have enough headroom anyway.
 
 
I thought that was the point. Using a compressor with conservative gain setting can help. Just use the make up gain if you need to.