Nic,
Do you have firewire output on the laptop you are planning on taking to gigs? This is becoming more and more rare on PC lappys these days. Also make sure with the Focusrite folks that the chipset that is part of your firewire setup is compatible with the Saffire. TI chipsets were recommended by PreSonus back in the day, and Focusrite may have similar recommendations.

The mixer applet on the Saffire 24 Pro series is quite complicated. I have first-hand experience with it; could basically use a Saffire Pro 24 DSP version for as long as I wanted to and I gave up on it. Then my Thinkpad with Firewire bit the dust, and I went USB.

That said, about 6 months ago, I bought a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8, and I've not had to fiddle with the mixer applet whatsoever.

Your channel count needs put you out of the Scarlett 2i2 and other 2 input cards. That is, if you want to run everything through the Saffire. There's no need to run your live mics through it if you have a PA system with a mixer - just run your mics and any other sound source into your mixer. You really just need BIAB for backing tracks, correct?

It's hard to determine if you are needing the synth-engine/MIDI sound generation capacity for which Gary went into great detail. I say this because you refer to the real tracks aspect of BIAB, which does not require some type of midi synth engine. If you use real tracks exclusively, there's no MIDI needs.

I don't know of any commercially available external sound cards these days which have both a synth engine and the audio I/O that you need.

How did you come by the Saffire? Have you used it whatsoever? It's an incredibly nice audio/MIDI interface (note the word interface, not sound module), but it is rather complicated, and I don't believe that you would be wise to use a headphone out of any device if you have other outs available that are more robust (true for the Saffire and other external sound cards).

-Scott

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