The 4Mic can output four individual digital channels (two coax, two optical) or can multiplex the channels so four mics becomes two digital outputs for capture by a device with two digital inputs, such as the M-Audio Microtrack II.
Wait...The Microtrack has two digital inputs? Mine has a single spdif in (rca).
No, the Microtrack has only one SPDIF input, as do most recorders with a digital input. Each SPDIF input channel can carry two channels.
The 4Mic squeezes 4 channels into those available two. Besides being a 4 channel mic preamp and ADC, the 4Mic performs the unique trick of taking the 4 resulting digital signals and mulitplexing them together to form 2 digital signals at twice the sample rate. That signal can then be recorded by any recorder with a single digital SPIF input which supports a high enough sample rate to record the multiplexed signal.
So for example, if the 4mic is set to sample the four inputs at 24/48 (I don't know the specs but I assume it does 24bit), you can have it output a single stereo SPDIF stream at 24/96. The recorder just sees and records a 24/96 stereo signal and does it's regular thing.
Then there must be some sort of software that de-multiplexes the signal so that you can retrive the four 24/48 signals again. The 24/96 multiplexed signal is not usable by itself without decoding.
It's a clever work around and an interesting approach, announced a few years ago as a companion to the tetramic, but I wasn't aware that it ever was released. Maybe it is now? No reason it would need to be used with a tetramic, you could use any 4 signal input.
This is sort of the reverse of the S/MUX tech which provided a way to transmit two high sample rate channels via multiple lower sample rate channels through an interface that only supported bit rates of up to 48kHz like LightPipe and ADAT.