IMO, mixers are evil to the home recordist. I have my reasons. Main reason is that it is simply unnecessary if you are recording an audio signal with most interfaces these days; particularly if you have mic pre-amps in the interface.

If you can abide it, you want the least amount of signal processing, both analog and/or digital, in between your source and the recorded 1's and 0's. This includes cable lengths.

At the Motown original studio, the guitarist and bass player were plugged in under the window of the control room and plugged into a patch panel in the wall. You can see it in this photo right here http://media.lonelyplanet.com/lpimg/20929/20929-9/preview.jpg right next to the hand-rail on the left side of the picture.

No amps were in that room during the golden years, or so we were told when I stood within inches of that patch panel.

I assume that you track your vocals after you have some scratch or guide tracks of keys, drums, etc. already laid down.

If so, name one reason why you need a mixer to track vocals, besides pre-amping the mic. If your card does not have it's own pre-amp, then perhaps you should use the mixer - but why not spend a little coin to get a decent pre-amp like some flavor of an ART and deal with equipment that is specifically designed for the sole purpose of pre-amping? I have a nice little single channel dbx mic and instrument pre-amp, but I rarely use it because the pre-amp in the sound card I've used for years is pretty doggoned nice.

Monitoring should be available from your sound card's headphone outlet.

I think you'll be pleased about the sound of the SM 58 directly into the Fast Track Pro, after tweaking. The pre-amps in that unit are decent spec, from those that I know that have one.

-Scott

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