Hi all, Elliott here from Cranborne Audio.
Thanks for your kind words about our products!
We could of made the Cranborne 500R8 Thunderbolt... however there actually isn't any benefit of doing so. We aren't beholden to latency (as we have an all analogue monitoring path) and infact the USB 2.0 solution we are using is as low latency as any thunderbolt interface as it's so lightweight and is core audio compliant. If we did add thunderbolt, we would have to increase the price by at least $3-400 in order to pay for the supporting hardware as well as extend development time by at least 2 months. For us, price was key as we wanted to make the unit accessible to everyone who wanted to get into 500 series but didn't want to sacrifice quality. We're running high-end, 127/121dB dynamic range converters with a sub 0.5 picosecond master-reference clock all for $1399 ... and it's built in the UK!
Don't get me wrong, I can't bare all those adapters you need for the latest MacBooks - thunderbolt is a bit neater nowadays! but USB 2.0 is still very usable, reliable and in our particular example has ample capabilities. and of course more accessible for more PC/Mac users.
If you guys have any questions about our products, feel free to ask away!
![Grin ;D](./images/smilies/grin.gif)