Had one weird thing happen with it the other night, but all in all a rock solid dependable machine.
So what happened? Was it machine or human error ?
What are you using for A/D? I probably cannot afford 24 channels of A/D but the XR version might be possible. Are the converters awful on the normal unit? How so if yes?
Not sure. I had one of the drives out of the unit for a couple of days on the fireport, and I think I unplugged the fireport without turning it off at some point. Put the drive caddy back in and the machine told me the drive was an invalid format (several times). Took it off and hooked it back to the fireport - no problems reading the tracks. Did a proper shutdown and stuck the caddy back in - booted right up and the files were intact. Weird. I'd say operator error caused a machine fault.
A/D is a combination of RME (Fireface), Mackie (Onyx 800R x 2) and Presonus (DigiMax). Keep in mind there are no preamps in the HD24; only line inputs.
I don't think the converters are awful, but I don't use them because the other converters I have are better than the stock Alesis ones, plus I need the preamps because I'm typically not getting line level signals. Their limiting factor is that they only go up to 48kHz - the XR version converters are better quality and go up to 96kHz. I don't record at 96kHz at the present time, but I could because the regular HD24 does support 96kHz via lightpipe (12 inputs only).
24 channels of good quality A/D is not as expensive as you might think though.
Tim, you can move tracks via the Fireport (sold separately for about $199 new) or via built in ethernet (the HD24 acts like an FTP server and can be connected to any computer network). After every show I back mine up and work on the project files in Nuendo.