I haven't tried it personally, but I made some calls for you to my "trusted" music friends. They said that it's good if you don't plan on expanding the inputs, you can only use ONE 828 at a time on one machine. The firewire does give you almost zero latency (time from your input going into the computer, and back out to your sound monitors), which is a great andvantage for "on the fly" recording. I like the sound quality of MOTU's products, but beware... they take forever to update their Mac drivers. But then again the only company I know of that accualy gives you constant driver updates is digidesign. But mostly they only do that for their 882 and 888 interfaces... $2,000.00 to $9,000.00, depending on where you buy them.
As far as mics and cables... Get a GOOD quality "RECORDING MIC". Sorry for the caps, but most people buy "stage mics" for recording, which means you might as well have just bought a 4-track to record on. Mic cables are mic cables. you will never hear a difference between Moster Cable, and el cheapo store brand. all together plan about $150-$200 for the mic, and about $50 for all the cables you will need. Also if you don't have a mixer, you will need a "mic pre-amplifier".. those run between $35-$50,000. of course a $50 mic pre will do you fine.
The built-in effects in the AudioDesk software they include will work pretty good for vocals, but for guitars stay with "out-board" or "external" effects, untill you can afford the full blow ProTools suite($125,000.) that is. And you will need a pre amp for your guitar.
With what you inteed to do I'd recomed a good mixer for you instead of multipule pre-amps... look at Mackie mixers. Even there low end live mixers are studio grade, and not much more expensive than the Radio Shack quality sound you'll get from other brands.
Hope this helps... If you need more info, let me know and I'll dig deeper.
DJ XTC
P.S. In my opinion, TASCAM hasn't made anything worth $**t, except for there CD burners.
