its all proprietary Soundfield plugins for all the popular DAW setups and sowftware.
but yes, you need 4 normal channels to record them all.
of course, you'd want 4 channels w/the identical signal path, ie preamp. Can't do that w/the 744, I believe?
R4 would be perfect, but its fidelity is not up to snuff, imo. You'd want nothing short of the best after plunking down $5k for one of these.