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- hard drives, okay for low speed (that includes USB flash drives), but there's a FireWire 800 port built-in that's much faster

FireWire is irrelevant if all my devices are USB.

- sound cards, built-in inputs and outputs

..and do those offer 24-bit 192khz with superb SNR like my E-MU 404 USB soundboard? How about a MIDI port.. oh it doesnt even have that, so I need a USB midi controller anyways? Yeah...

- headsets, yes some are USB but most are still using 1/8" jacks

1/8" Wireless? Yeah.. not.

webcams, built-in

..so not as good as the one I already have thats USB?

ethernet ports, there's one built-in

So only one? Yeah.

I haven't purchased any of these yet, but I've been wondering the same thing as you, and the E-MU Systems Pipeline looks really interesting.

XLR isn't about the stereo or the speakers, it's all about recording the sound. Once you have the sound on your computer/amp/mixer whatever when you output it to the speakers it's a simple 2 conductor operation (banana plug, bare wire,1/4" cable etc.) To get started with XLR you need:
1. Mic that uses XLR connector, a really good mic is the SURE 57. (about $100)
2. Mic preamp. Almost all preamps use XLR, some mixers have preamps built into them. (another $50 at least)
3. Something to record on. I'm guessing you're using a computer.

There are specialized sound cards made just for recording, they start pretty cheap ($100 e.g.: emu), but you won't get an XLR input on a sound card for less than $200, if you're happy using your mic preamp and going into the balanced 1/4" a $100 card you can still get a very good recording, but really you should have XLR inputs on the card itself so it's "XLR" ([sic]eXtremly Low Resistance) all the way to the card. And then there's the software. I like Sonar. Some people like cubebase, even others like fruity loops and if you have a mac there is the ubiquitous pro tools. Really you're looking at spending about $300 for the whole setup, and then you can finally get rid of that stupid hum. Don't forget, if you have an electric guitar/bass that you will need to shield the pickups using some a-foil around the wires pots and any crossovers etc. that may be contain electrical pathways. Also, make sure you've attached your bridge to the ground wire so it grounds on your fingers.
Here are some low cost pro sound cards:
http://www.emu.com/
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?ID=recording&do=products.family

You might also want to check out E-MU cards. I'm not in the business, but their products seem pretty professional to me. I own an E-MU 1212m (because I am into hi-fi) and love it.

For those of you who don't know, this stuff has been around for quite some time, I'm thinking years...

First of all, a little company called Eventide has been making pitch shifters for literally decades. The H969 has been capable of using an external control voltage to vary the amount of shift since it was released to the market back in the late 80's. The newer H-3000's were MIDI capable, again allowing for remote control of how much to shift the pitch of the incoming signal. The H-3000's have been around since the early 90's.

Next, I don't remember if it was Synclavier, Emulator/EM-U Systems, or Fairlight systems (no longer in business) that came out with the first pitch-to-midi convertor - again back in the late 80's.

The point is that there were people doing this way back then, using pitch-tracking hardware and pitch shifting hardware in a way to create pitch corrected output of singers - and I am talking about in live concerts, not rebroadcasts, not recordings, but live.

Let's not even get into the issue of the number of live bands I've seen where the band used DAT for the group vocals in concert. I'm not talking bar bands either!

Wow. The things you learn. I've been out of the keyboard scene for a while now and didn't realize that E-Mu and Ensoniq had merged in 1999. Also didn't know that they were now owned by Creative. [cite] Creative is also an equal partner owner of THX now... makes me wonder what else they've been buying up.

The audio fidelity on the whole is as good as can be expected. We all know what MP3 encoding does to your tunes if you have a reasonable speakers

All mp3 decoders are not created equal and I sure wish reviewers would dig a little deeper. If they go beyond navigation and I/O features and cover audio quality, it's typically only to mention background hum or hiss or a wimpy headphone amplifier.

mp3 at high bitrates created with a competent encoder (LAME is one) can sound pretty good. Decoding with cheap 16 bit DSPs such as the TMS320C54x used in the Rio One is hard to do-- you have to watch out for error accumulation (e.g. please round to zero instead of simply truncating).

If you don't believe me that decoders differ, consider these tests of PC decoders. Unfortunately, no one seems to do such detailed testing on embedded decoders.

I'm giving my Rio One to my nephew who will be so thrilled to have it that if he hears the high-frequency errors on playback of middlin' bitrates (192kbps), he probably won't mind.

I don't know what I'm going to replace it with, though. I know I shouldn't expect much out of a $80 player powered from on AA cell, but there's no guarantee that a $400 Rio Riot or iPod will be glitch-free: they might have spent the whole power and cost budget on LCDs, hard drives and amortizing development.

A StrongARM-based PocketPC might be the answer- plenty of horsepower to run less compromised 16 bit decoder or even a 24 bit or floating point one. It should also be able to decode ogg vorbis....

By the way, instead of reasonable speakers, I'm using a good pair of headphones. Much more bang for the buck when it comes to revealing audio defects, though the Sonys tend to be a bit shrill (well the older V6s that I have) for long-term listening. These are the same model we used when I was at E-mu for all normal testing. The only thing more revealing was the elements from a good pair of Sennheisers in a set of noise protection muffs to cut background noise by 23dB. Also, some of the ATC guys have Grado electrostatics.