I'm thinking of buying a MOTU 896HD. Assuming I'm running Windows XP,
Cubase SX3 and have a motherboard with a Texas Instruments 1394 chip,
is this thing going to be rock solid? I've heard of stability issues
with MOTU on PC's, but I think a lot of that might have been with the
PCI cards or with firewire interfaces going into non-TI firewire
ports. Am I likely to experience any glitches?

Also, does anyone know if the 896HD's preamps are hard bypassed when
in "fixed" input level mode? The MOTU Tech documents say to bypass
them by setting them in "fixed" mode, but I get the impression that it
isn't a hard bypass and that the signal still passes through the mic
pre circuitry. I've e-mailed MOTU tech support, but haven't received
an answer.