Onboard DACs are good enough for HiFi, so there's less need for specialized sound cards today, except for making music when one needs ultra low latency (built i

Onboard DACs are good enough for HiFi, so there's less need for specialized sound cards today, except for making music when one needs ultra low latency (built in audio is getting a lot better also at this however) or multi track recording. I'll be buying shortly a Tascam US-16x08; it doesn't offer much more in terms of sound fidelity than my older Steinberg CI1, but it can record 16 channels at the same time, which is handy when miking a complete set of instruments (drumset mikes + overheads, keyboards, guitars & bass amps, voice, etc... you never have enough inputs) so I can easily keep track during rehearsals and have more freedom during recordings.