You know, one of the chains in my workflow just bit the dust, so I crawled out of my cave to do a little shopping - and I am amazed that all of the marketing tends to want to point us towards a "hybrid" system - with "real" tactile touch of faders, and the ability to mix OTB because it has that "analog sound and feel".
This - after years of pushing us towards rack mounted units for a complete, "professional" mobile/home studio!
And during those years, I've had to suffer with driver issues, products that go obsolete and get abandoned, being told I need to update my computer, and then discovering some piece of gear is no longer supported now that I HAVE updated my computer. Or worse, you have to freeze your system, so you're stuck on some ancient OS.
Or this particular firewire chipset doesn't work with our gear... oops!
I realize I am venting, and generalizing, but we've all been there.
My point is - since quite a few manufacturers are now trying to market us hybrid mixers for both live and studio work - I've just about had enough and I am about to just go to a standalone 24 track HD recorder, and totally analog mixer. I'll make my stereo back to that same HD recorder, and any ITB stuff will be done as needed, which frankly won't be much. I'm really that frustrated with the whole thing.
After years of telling us we don't need that piece of gear, why do you want a mixer, do it all ITB, they want me to buy a hybrid analog mixer! Too funny.
Okay, sorry for venting.
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Almost all of my multi-track recording is done to Alesis HD24XRs
Almost all of my multi-track recording is done to Alesis HD24XRs. For mixdown, one of my favourite routes is HD24XRs -> analog desk -> 2-channel ADC -> computer (or another HD24XR). This route allows me the freedom to record the source at 96KHz and digitize the 2-track stereo mix at 44.1KHz without involving any sample-rate conversion algorithms.
Recently for some small/medium jobs I've been trying an A+H Zed-R16 mixer. For 44.1KHz recordings, it's interesting to compare the results of going analog out of the HD24XR into the R16 versus lightpipe from the HD24XR into the R16 and using the R16's D-A converters. Both routes give high quality mixes, but some recordings seems to focus better via one route and some benefit from the other. I've moved away from using the R16's built-in ADCs on the 2-track output and instead prefer the results of converting the analog out using an external ADC (usually an RME FF800). For 96KHz recordings, it's always analog into the mixer, since the R16 does not offer the S/MUX higher ADAT rates.