Considering a Saffire 56. Opinions wanted

[albee1952]

Hey Folks, now that we have had some time for things to settle in, and Focusrite has delivered their plugin for monitoring, is this a contender, or not? Specifically, how is the plugin monitoring working(will I miss the LLM feature of my 003, or is it all moot when working at a 64 buffer)? Much as I like my 003, as a controller, it takes regular vacations from operation(thankfully, the transport buttons always work). Yesterday, I worked several sessions for several hours and the scribble strip stayed dark, and the faders never moved. Today, all worked fine. Operation with PT8(and back to 7.3) was always perfect, but I am not going to give up PT9 and I can get transport buttons on a Presonus Faderport(which I already own). Has anyone done a side by side sonic comparison? Are there issues I need to be aware of? Can I stuff in another 16 inputs with the 2 lightpipe ports? Inquiring minds want to know