On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 9:58 AM, John Murphy <rosegardener@freeode.co.uk> wrote:

As a newcomer to the "Pro Audio" industry and a long time *nix user
(somewhat mitigating this outburst here) I must say I'm not impressed.

I've spent thousands recently and found suppliers either just don't
'know' the products they sell, or purposely misrepresent them. In one
instance it took nearly a month to obtain a refund!

You need to get better suppliers then. Can't help you on your side of the pond, but I can tell you there is a huge difference on my side of the pond between most stores and suppliers.

Why must I have so many microphone inputs? I'm a solo poet/musician
with one mic. and enough places to plug it in to sink a battleship.

You don't need to get that many mic inputs unless you want them. There are multiple interfaces I can think of with 2 or less mic inputs but still having ADAT or multiple line inputs. And of course there are numerous 2 channel or so interfaces.

Synth manufacturers: Why no ADAT out?

Korg Triton, as an example, years ago had it. I liked the concept, in reality it very rarely got used, thus why it likely got removed(Pure assumption on my part). For gigging musicians, it means savings thousands of dollars on AD/DA conversion, for studio musicians many are switching to controllers and computer based synths or using analog synths.

Seablade