Not much today, I went to a music shop, and looked for a new bass guitar.

Nothing they had in the shop grabbed me much, mainly jazz guitars they had in. There were a couple that looked ok, and were fairly priced, but they were Ibanez brand, and that's what I've got now, and I find it to be a bit cheesy, so I don't want to buy another one.

I didn't end up buying one, but I did browse the sound cards, they had a Delta 66 there, for $600, and a Delta 2496 there for $400.

I'm after the Delta 44, since (or even a 41 :-) since I only need 4 analog inputs. (hmm, $199 USD, not too bad).

I'll have to have another look on eBay. I could have got a 1010 a while ago, but it's huge, rack mount, and I don't need anywhere near 10 inputs.

In the mean time, I still might have a go at getting the 4 cheap and nasty sound cards I bought working (even 2 of them would give me 4 channels).

I detailed it before, but running multiple sound cards introduces sync issues, because of the tolerances of the quartz crystals on the board. Apparently you can remove the crystals off all but one board, and run them all in parallel off the same crystal.

My issue was needing to use the microphone inputs, which are only mono, so 2 cards only gives me 2 channels, but if I can use the line inputs, then 2 cards will give me 4 inputs (left + right on each card).

Anyway, since they didn't have the sound card I was after (and it would have been really expensive).

In the end, I bought a microphone, a Shure SM-57, for $210, after haggling the guy down from $260.

I couldn't do anything with it, because it didn't come with a cable, and my XLR -> 6.5mm cable was at home, and I didn't have anything to attach it to anyway.