I'm needing to set up a basic PC audio rig for a pastor who will be
recording a monthly "sermon" that will be broadcast on a local radio
station. One track preamped audio and headphone monitoring should be
sufficient. He will be recording through his office computer and then will
burn a CD for future broadcast. The budget is 250 or under for the
interface - computer, mic, and accessories are already taken care of.

My personal studio is Pro Tools based and I haven't kept up on lower cost
interfaces until I started looking into this project. Since I've been
researching a bit I have a couple of questions...

External USB interfaces used to be pretty flaky, has that changed? The
Tascam US-122, M-Audio USB, and Edirol stuff looks promising, but I'm not
sure about reliability. Firewire is an option too, but I wonder if it might
be overkill for this simple application - and it might stretch the budget a
bit.

I've also thought about dropping in a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard with
an Audiobuddy preamp front end.

Any advice?