OT: Recording equipment

[Mark Hamburg <mark_hamburg@baymoon.com>]

Far less fun than collecting looping devices and instruments, a realistic
appraisal of my studio tells me that I need to address the following
need(s):

* I need a good way to convert from analog signals to digital with
appropriate limiting. I've got various things -- e.g., my SP-808 -- that
will do the A/D conversion but it's prone to digital distortion.

* I also need a good way to get coax SPDIF information into my computer (a
Mac cube running MacOS X 10.2).

One approach to the conversion issue would be to get something like the
Really Nice Compressor and work with the converters in the equipment I've
got. It strikes me, however, that I might be better off looking for
dedicated converters with built-in limiting rather than putting together an
extended chain. On the other hand, I'm not looking to spend vast sums on
converters.

I don't particularly care about compression. All I care about is being able
to run the signals reasonably hot to get the full dynamic range without
being concerned about digital distortion if the signals should happen to
spike up at some point.

The signals will generally be coming from my Mackie 1642 VLZpro. I 
generally
only care about stereo inputs since most of the work I do seems to go
straight to 2-track.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Mark