It's five stars for the value. I bought it because I needed more input channels on my RME Babyface. Tascam knows how to make preamps. It's not a boutique thing, but it's a, very clean, 8-channel, rack for a very reasonable price, it has an optical output so that you can record up to 8 channels at 96Khz with a single output cable, and it also has built-in limiters. I think it's perfect to expand your sound card and have more channels for recording drums or a small band. Noise is low, it has 52dB of gain and the frequency response is very linear. It certainly does the job.