Charlie, you've given my quite a bit to digest in a relatively brief note. I like that that Behringer can handle MIDI. I guess one main thing I can take away from it is simply that the more channels I have at my disposal, the better. With my 12-channel Mackie and my outboard instruments, I actually don't have enough channels if I want to run mics while I have everything hooked up. And while I realize there will be times when I don't need to have everything hooked up, I like to have my DAW set up that way.

I do have an escape valve of sorts. Back when I was putting together my DAW, I bought a little Midiman 6 channel mixer that never really got used much. It is dead quiet, so it can be used in a recording environment. So in a pinch, I can hook it up to my Mackie, which will give me a net gain of 4 channels. I dunno, that Mackie has so many auxes and ins and stuff, I might figure out a way to hook it up that way and come away with a net gain of 6 channels. Still, this is a stop-gap measure and not one I'd want to incorporate on a permanent basis.

I've never thought much of running things this way, but I certainly can: my Delta 66 card has four ins (two combo XLR and 1/4" phono) and four outs in addition to Auxes and effects routing and monitor sends, all balanced/unbalanced. Its Omni I/O "interface" provides easy access to all these features. I've never seen much point in running four ins or outs, but I guess with a big enough mixer, there may be advantages. Incidentally, it's called a "66" because it also has two SPDIF channels, which I've never used. I was just scanning through the Omni's manual and I see where it says the four AUX ins it has can be used for MIDI instruments. Since the Omni has no MIDI ports, I guess what they mean is the Omni can handle these instruments' audio through these inputs. Interesting, but I'd rather run my MIDI instruments' audio through my board's shared "stereo" channels (5/6, 7/8, 9/10, 11/12). But I guess that would be a way to free up those 8 channels.

chulaivet, cool, you're using a Delta 44! Glad to see another Delta user here. My DAW's setup is similar to yours, except I note you're running all four of your 44's outs to your board. Got a couple of questions, though. What are you doing to record your mix? And I see you have three MIDI devices daisy-chained, but you have a single stereo audio signal from the MIDI chain hooked into your board. I'll admit, I'm a bit fuzzy about MIDI these days, but I thought that daisy chaining only worked for the MIDI signals and any audio had to be handled separately? In other words, I didn't know you could daisy-chain your audio as well?

Best,
Michael

My Music:
https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/albums