yea at $232 is getting above my pay grade.. heh.. i'm looking for things in the free-$100 range for anything.. be it a significant QS upgrade or a new box..
i know these units were thousands back in the day.. i remember buying my first Mac, a 400mhz G4 Sawtooth for $1500 (no monitor) which is crazy in hindsight.. had to take a personal loan out to buy it.. couldn't even afford an audio interface for it.. just used the stereo in / out in the back, but did manage to buy a used MIDI Express..
But lately after paying $25 for my current 450mhz Sawtooth and then about the same for the Quicksilver.. I honestly think that if i could get my hands on a top-range MDD I'd be able to live with the noise.. I could probably find some ways to muffle the sound when recording with an open Mic.. most of the time i do line in stuff so no amount of room noise would effect the actual recordings..
week has been crazy though.. gearing up for trip this weekend.. didn't get to do the thermal paste.. iching to configure this serial port PCI card and test out midi.. i swear there are some noticable USB latency problems.. like in Digital peroformer, when using arpegiation, any meter over whole notes ends up being off a slight bit.. and same goes for just basic midi playback of stuff... things feel kinda lose and night tight at times.. i'm eager to see if maybe using serial for midi will be tighter..