All.

I’m weighing up a possible mixer solution for a home studio. The current setup is as follows:

Vocals: BLUE Kiwi / U87 -> Liquid Channel
Acoustic guitar: KM184 x 2 -> John Hardy M1
Room: BLUE Kiwi -> John Hardy M1

Preamps -> LynxTWO -> PC with Cubase SX 3

I’m currently doing my mixing in the PC (including all FX and processing). But, it’s a bit sh*tty using a mouse all the time.

Possibilities are:

1) Hardware controller and keep the mixing in the DAW.
2) External analog mixer.
3) External digital mixer.

Can you offer any advice and / or do you know of any good articles / threads that weigh up the relative pros and cons of these three methods?

Asking for specific model recommendations is a very open ended thing to do, but if anyone has had good comparative experience I’d be very interested – my budget is about £1200 (about $2150). Given the relatively few channels I'll need - I'm hoping this is realistic.

Given the quality of the front end, a primary concern is maintaining the quality of the signal (only applicable to options 2 and 3 where another link is added to the chain).

Thanks.

Dave