Gazzamundo,
Please let us know and post your results! I hope you notice an improvement in your recorded sound.
I am thinking ahead on your behalf now: If you do not notice an improvement in your recording, you will then have two recording interfaces with preamps and converters, one with firewire connectivity, and one without. The Alesis is more useful as an interface to connect to your computer, which leaves you with a new interface with fewer options than your existing one. This potentially leads you back to where you started, still wondering what you would need to upgrade to get better results, and at what cost.
If you had decided to purchase a strictly mic preamp, like the Grace 101 mentioned earlier, you would then be faced with connecting balanced outputs from the preamp to your unbalanced line level inputs of your existing interface, which may not be the most desireable way to ensure a clean signal path. Perhaps someone more knowledgable about this can chime in here.
If your results are better, then what I have to say here is, perhaps, pointless.
Let us know what the results are.
