Gotta love technology. M-Audio has introduced a new USB2 audio/midi interface. 4 really excellent microphone preamps, and DSP (for near zero latency mixes/monitoring). List price, $450, but the street price is quite a bit less.
UPDATE 11/28 by E: After checking the Mic preamp specs, and that of the Project Mix I/O, the Mic preamps on this new box are a lot better. After doing some recordings with the Project Mix I/O at 96Khz, I thought the preamps were amazing……..so this little box might be capable of some even more amazing recordings.