Hey guys,
Despite the horde of negative opinions online, I pulled the trigger and bought a used d8b months ago. It was barely used from a home studio, complete with the 5.1 OS, Apogee card, 3 lightpipe cards, 3 FX cards, and all the plugins authorized. Not bad for just $500. The guy even threw in a patch bay and would have sold me the Argosy desk for cheap but I didn't have the room for it.
This particular d8b was purchased at near the end of the product's life cycle (Aug. '03 by the manual). It seems most of the problem units (as least the ones complained about online) were made years earlier. I've been using it nearly every day since December and haven't had a single problem yet. I do have some random questions for you guys though.
1. The light on my d8b cpu's power button flickers. Is this normal or the sign of a (upcoming) power issue?
2. Are any of guys using an usb or firewire audio interface to run multiple (16+) lightpipe streams in/out the d8b? If so, which interfaces? I know it's probably not worth the trouble trying to mix through the d8b, considering my UAD-2 plugs and the power of native computing these days, but I'd like to try it once.