Hey,

Don't knock the 424. I bought one years ago and the fun I had with it led me on to get the digital setup I have now.

I still use it today when I'm thinking about arrangements and just want to experiment quickly. I converted my garage into a studio (sound proofed the walls etc) and so if I don't want to be too anti-social and spend all evening in the studio I can use the 424 in the house just to get ideas down and at a later date record them properly.

Incidently I mount my PZM pair directly to a wall and route the cables along the wall - its also an easy job to remove the jack supplied with the PZM and fit a standard XLR. If you are interested in PZM's then I suggest you have a trawl around the net, there is quite a lot of good information about them - converting for phantom power etc.

Whistlestop - I don't think you need to invest in outboard effects for quite a while yet, the Roland effects cards in the VS are very good. The only reason I mentiones the compressor is because the compressor in the Roland is a digital compressor which is after the AD convertors. Ideally to maximise the signal to noise you should do your compression in the analogue domain before the AD conversion.

Ian

Ian