D16 is really OLD stuff. Get the D1600 or somthing... S$3K , still got change these-days.
these are stand alone multi-track recorders. Just plug in and play. The new ones have built-in CD (or even DVD) bruners so you can record, mix, master and burn to CD all on the same machine.
YOu can also hook them up to equipment with MIDI output.
Basically, how good your sound is, depends on how good your source is. You can hook S$8000 mics to it and capture great sounds....and most of these recorders record in WAV files, so it is non-compress formats.