soundcard or usb device with xlr out


hey everyone.. i'm looking for either a soundcard or a usb device that has balanced xlr outs to my preamp. This is pretty much all i'm looking for but i guess it would be nice to record my guitar as well. so far, i know of the lynx soundcards that have xlr outs and i read about the apogee mini-dac in a previous thread.
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/prod_minidac.html
it seems like you could use the mini-dac as a preamp because it has analog volume control-and you could have the xlr's go directly to an amp. does that make sense? and if so, does anyone know of any devices like this that are remote-controlled? also, regarding the mini-dac, could i plug in my dvd player via spdif or optical cable and have control of the volume if the analog outs went directly to my amp? wouldn't this just be a small preamp? thanks for the input.
vpolineni
ESI U24 has balanced out. It accepts 1/4 inch balanced phono plugs. It also has optical and coax digital input and output. You can see more about it here:
http://www.rivesaudio.com/software.html#U24
if it doesn't go right to the U24, just click on it on the menu and you can see the specifications.
better yet, the edirol ua-20... seems like a winner for both playback and recording.
I haven't used either of these so I can't really give a comparison. I can only give my experiences of the one I've used. It's fairly basic, not a whole lot to play around with--although I'm told the Mac software is pretty nice (but I've only used it on a PC). Anyway, we wanted a very reliable, small and compact unit that could be put in our test kit. We wanted it to measure very very close to flat (although our software doesn't actually require very high performance of a sound card). We did measure the card and it's very flat. I have played music through it and it sounds far far better than the stock soundcard (but that's not really saying much). I have not recorded on it, but have spoken to a few people that have and they were very pleased with it. We work with some professional groups and have thought about taking the PC and recording some things on it--just haven't gotten to that yet. Now ESI does make some more sophisticated units (we don't sell them) but I imagine they have just about anything you could want for more serious recording. You can visit their site at http://www.esi-pro.com/