[LAU] Live mixers/recording

Some of you may remember a while ago (year and a half or so) I was asking about mixers for live use. I finally have some money to spend, so I went back over the thread. I also looked at some of the lower end digital boards like the A&H QU and the Soundcraft Si series. I found it interesting that the mackie has firewire but the other two have chosen USB2.0 even for a channel count as high as 32 i/o. The manual says "standard compliant" and will work with the Apple no extra drivers (nothing works with windows without drivers). Has anyone tried one of these with alsa? Considering the cost of a high count audio interface, the cost of this as an audio IF plus controler starts to look not too bad. It is obvious that the main cost is hardware, pots, switches and connectors. The digital boards don't try to put in as much hardware, yet seem to be able to give more features for the same price range. It is easy to include a whole effects rack on almost a per channel basis only by changing cpu/dsp power. I guess in many ways that is what we are doing with a daw... time for the open console design? Actually we have much of it already, it is just the hardware parts we don't seem to have. I/O ports and control surfaces is all thats missing. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net