Emu appears to be committed to developing EOS into the future. Recently they introduced the RFX board that alllows for a tremendously flexible FX routing. That's good, because the stock FX in the Ultras are not the greatest. I can't say enough about the sound. It's open, airy, delightful with tremendous realism.
Separation is excellent, even going out the main mix outputs.
The internal mixer is well thought out. I prefer my e5k over my Gigasampler, EXS24 and SoundFonts, despite that I can't use really long samples and am stuck at 16 bit. Studio hacks know, the bottom line is sound.