What you want is a firewire mixer. That is an interface and mixer rolled into one! Sounds nifty, doesn't it? Of course, these aren't dirt cheap. If you want to record a whole band at the same time and sound good, you're gonna need to drop thousands and thousands of dollars (assuming you don't already have mics, preamps, good guitar amps, acoustic treatment, etc...). Otherwise, overdubbing works quite well, and you don't need 12 channels to overdub. What Yamaha mixer are you looking at? You basically need the mixer to feed into your computer with a firewire or usb connection for it to also be an interface. A standard sound board won't provide recording capabilities.

NCdan
"A standard sound board won't provide recording capabilities."
Don't say that to Codemonkey, he'll tell you it does too, just very limited.

Yeah, you're right jg49. Of course, you could always hook up the sound board to an interface, but then the question is: why didn't you just get a firewire mixer in the first place?

I assume he is getting the mixer for free because it has "ABOUT 12 channels" maybe 11 or possibly 13, and has no money, but did "somehow?" acquire Cubase.