We have made recordings with a Boss 1600 CD.
It's possible to record 8 channels in one session.
With the virtual tracks you can do more channels.
It has 8 Jack or XLR(with phantom) inputs.
Before you can use it you have to experiment for a while and don't foprget to read the manual.
It's also nice if you know much about how to make recordings.

The Alesis MutliMix 16 Firewire (also available in 12 and 8 channel models) will do live mixing just fine. The real beauty is that it will do a mutitrack recording to your computer, via firewire connection which is about 50 times faster than USB, up to 16 tracks at the same time. Retails at Musician's Friend and similar for $400. I have a different Alesis mixer (minus the Firewire) and am considering trading up to this.

Russ - I had overlooked that unit since my window shopping has been oriented towards something that I can use with the Soundcraft board at the Opera House.

Looks like a good unit to catch live performances on multi-track, although I would agree with one of the reviewers on Musician's Friend that sending stuff to the computer post-fader will probably give you some unwanted peaks and valleys in a track when you go to mix it down later.

Kent seems to want something to hold tracks to play back as accompaniment for live performance, so having a unit with an on-board hard disk could be the easiest thing.

As with many questions in the music world, you have to consider how many pieces you want to carry around, what you actually want to do today, and what kind of flexibility you want to meet future needs.

Kent, at Balfa camp this year, I noticed a couple of people with the "Edirol R-9" portable recording recorders. I don't know anything about them, other than the sweetwater link shown above. And the fact that they want $400 for this thing. At a lower cost, my buddy Randy gets pretty good results with his iriver portable MP3 recorder and a good mic.

Good luck Kent and please let us know where you wind up on this deal.

Rob K.

One more thing about the Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire - it has a two-track in connection, so you play your prerecorded tracks back through a device connected to that input, send that device to the main mix, and use the other channels for the members of your live band. The 2-track input is a standard RCA stereo pair.