I rarely record with more than an SBD patch + stereo pair, or if I'm feeling crazy, 2 stereo pairs. Maybe go to 6 or 8 mics syncing two decks another 2-3 times a year. But every once in awhile - in a venue or situation where they'd let me do it - it would be pretty sweet to run a true multichannel board patch, say 8 channels, plus a stereo pair. Now, a 788T could pretty much get me there, but, well, I'm not quite there on spending that kind of cash, yet.
It seems that the easiest route is some kind of mixer. Again, all I would really want would be to run a bunch of board channels plus one stereo mic pair. I own plenty of pres, so the mixer doesn't necessarily HAVE to have a decent pre in it, though that'd be convenient.
After that, the next question seems to be what the mixer outputs to. I guess there is the option of simply running it into my R-44, but that would mean needing to dial-in the mix on the fly.
The other option is to go mixer>computer. I have a Macbook Air which I think would do the trick, as I could connect the mixer via USB (correct)? Am I also correct that the input from USB will be in the form of discrete channels (so I could record, say, 8 separate channels at once)? I know lots of people use Pro Tools, which I don't have. Will Audition, or even Audacity, handle this function also?
Last, I really don't know much about the market for these things at all. As I said, this would really just be a fairly occasional thing to play with and not a full-on rackmount system that I would be sinking thousands of dollars into. For example, I saw this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004W6KREC/ref=asc_df_B004W6KREC1978673?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=asn&creative=395093&creativeASIN=B004W6KREC&hvpos=1o1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=744469130235402472&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt= - would this or something like it do the trick?