Increasing fidelity and system fliexibility is the need of the hour.

My work and my investment requires me to be capable of handling the following audio situations.

1. Studio recording with 16 simultaneos tracks at 16 bit 44.1 Khz.

2. Live recording with 16 simultaneous tracks preferably thru a compact source like a Firewire into a laptop.

My main mixer is a Mackie 1640 Onyx feeding an external FW drive( Maxtor 100 gb10000 rpm pretty much pulls off my live show. My first concern is..do I need a firewire hub for all the frewire ins and outs.
For eg. Onyx out goes into what first? the external FW drive or the laptop. So in any case, ill need a set of firewire ports. right?

But for the studio, I am now considering of going in for a Pro Tools LE Digi 002 system and software.

My points of concern here are...

1.Can I connect the ONYX DB-25 Direct outs into my Pro Tools system thru a DB 25 snake?

If not, then maybe I'd have to plug into the 'Insert' to one click and just send the signal.
BTW Mike, The school where I studied had a similar setup. They werent going into the Pro Tools lE control surface mixer thru an M-Box or any Digidesign gear, but with the direct outs from the Mackie VLZ Pro.
(This is a concern since I couldve gone in for a basic Mackie VLZ pro mixer and taken direct outs per channel ..but that would'nt serve my live recording purpose ie. thru the ONYX FW)

The point is I could connect thru the DB 25 for studio into Pro Tools and for a live recording, just pick up my ONYX and FW drive and record via Firewire into another software, say cubase.

For live, I'm probably using Cubase SX for recording. And Pro Tools for the studio.

Can someone please help me with this configuration.
Thanks a Bunch!

G