I used to have the original MOTU Ultralite, think it was around the £300-400 mark when new, I think that had the option to daisychain units via firewire so you could add more inputs/outputs etc. I had it for about 6 years and it never had a problem, apart from the inputs and outputs would sometimes have a bit of a seizure and start sending random crackling and noise to all the channels. The Windows drivers have always been a bit sketchy compared to Mac ones (so I've read at least) but after a while the problem became really infrequent, in fact it may have stopped altogether so maybe they fixed it. Last year I decided it was getting old and wanted something quieter and a bit more 'pro' so I traded the MOTU plus £500 for a used RME Fireface 800.
The RME is quieter probably owing to better circuitry and AD/DA converters - the MOTU still is quiet and gave about -85dB to -87dB in REAPER with the line ins to begin with though, but the RME is -99dB to -102dB in some cases. I prefer to use outboard preamps anyway so I prefer quiet high quality line inputs. I spoke to the guy who took my MOTU off me and he said he noticed a definite difference, saying that the low end of the MOTU was not as evident and high quality as the RME. RME drivers have been rock solid from day one and never had a single problem. FF800 also has ADAT connectors for connecting additional units or better quality AD/DA units.
There is a Fireface 400 at the £750 ish mark but it only has 4 line ins on the rear, the other 4 are 2x combo XLR/TRS and 2x jack instrument/line ins. One thing I loved about the MOTU Ultralite was that it had two dedicated main outs for your monitors - the FF800 makes you sacrifice your line out 1 and 2 so effectively you only have 6 analog outs for routing signals out of it. It does however have very complex mixing software that gives you full control over your ins/out/buses etc. MOTUs have a dedicated main vol control and headphone level on the front panel, the master vol is also the power on button and as time wore on it felt looser to the point that it felt it might break anytime - I looked into this and it's a VERY specialist part and nigh on impossible to replace yourself.
I did a lot of research at the time and it felt like MOTU and RME were the only good choices under a grand but this may have changed since! I was never keen on going over the £500 mark but the sad truth is if you want the next step up in quality you don't really have much choice.
Not sure if all this will be relevant but it's good to know anyway!