Posted on 
May 27, 2004 10:42 pm Oh boy.
I have used a Tascam US428 (4 channel) USB with a mixer in front if it (Behringer 1604) with fair results. Obviously this will only suffice if you can record things seperately. I used a firewire drive to capture the data. The system was ok. Can't comment beyond 4 channels although I have read of folks doing more than 4 on a laptop in mags. The inherrant problems are bandwidth into the system (number of channels) and the bandwith of the data hard drive.
If you don't have a laptop yet or need one with more horsepower (easly 2 grand without A/D conversion) you might want to consider something like an Alesis HD24. Twenty four channels right into a dedicated rack mount "computer" for two grand. Comes with an ethernet port for transfering files to either a mac or pc for mixing and mastering.
