Hi all, this is my first post (probably of many!) so please go easy on me!

I read quite a bit on this forum over the last few days so i thought I had best join up and start asking stupid questions... Gotta start somewhere I suppose!

My situation is this: I'm in the UK and I have been building up a nice selection of equipment (hardware synths, midi keyboard etc) for 12 months now and also taught myself Ableton Live 8 for building my tracks in.
I have an EMU audio/midi interface to use with the synths and keyboard.

I have been a club DJ for 10 years and always wanted to try to make my own Funky House and House tracks, so this is what I am now doing :

I have found myself teaming up with a good friend who I used to DJ House with, and he used to actually produce and sell house records comercially in the 1990's and now after doing nothing for about 11 years he has rebuilt a studio and we are working together.

It's been a big learning curve for both of us because his experience is purely analog... loads of synths, samplers and other stuff all connected by midi into an old Atari sequencer and ran right into a big 24 channel Mackie desk with meter bridge for mixing/recording.
Whereas I have purely learnt building tracks using audio samples and loops inside Ableton and then mixing 'in the box' and burning right to a CD.

I'll get to the point now: he still has his desk and thousands of £ worth of outboard hardware gear (compressors, effects units,etc) we have both come to the conclusion after a couple of weeks of clicking the mouse and peering at a screen that we would both be much happier building the tracks inside Ableton as normal but then sending all the seperate tracks out onto the desk for EQing and mixing, plus giving it a bit of a warmer sound with some bits of vintage gear on the way.

How can we do this? And do it in a cost effective way? We are running out of money! Ha ha!

I presume I need a new audio interface with a heap of analog outputs on it? It's a 24 channel desk so anything with 18-24 channels of 'out' would be good but there are so many to choose from I don't know where to start!
Plus, a lot of them seem to have a maximum of 8-10 outs on them. My current EMU only has 2 channels of out.

How do the people in 'proper' studios do it, when you see them making a track on Logic/Ableton etc but them mixing it on a big desk?

Also I presume most DAW's like Ableton will support all these Outs when it 'detects' a big audio interface?

Thanks in advance for your help, and I'm sorry to go on for ages but i though it would be a good introduction from me!

Thanks.