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Hi, OP here again.

First of all thanks to everyone for some really helpful replies. You won't recognise my name but I have been following this n/g for over 15 years so I am familiar with many of the regular contributors and have great respect for your opinions.

Just to round a few items off:

- The 8 input thing: Well I've been doing home recording since I was a kid and back then I used two mono reel-to-reel machines and ping-ponged back and forth. I then graduated through the 4 track cassette portastudio and got my first 8 track system in the 90s which I agree at the time seemed fantastic. But this isn't the 90s any more. I don't want to sub-mix my vocals or horns or drums, I want everything on a separate track in one pass.

I got a system capable of this about 6 or 7 years ago using the aforementioned Phonic 24 and a HP pavilion laptop (with firewire). Both have given excellent service, and still do, but I know the laptop will die one day (probably quite soon) and so I'm planning for my next upgrade.

I don't want to go backwards. Currently I have 18 simultaneous record channels and I kinda like them. From the various replies I see I have these choices:

- get the same Phonic mixer I already have but the USB version. I very nearly did this but was put off with the reviews of this model with many people saying the power supply crapped out after a year. My firewire version hasn't shown any problems, but then it was built 7 years ago when maybe they used better components. Anyhow, I was disappointed to see that Phonic seems to be the only prosumer brand that caters for my market (although thanks for the tip about Behringer E32 - I'll look into that). I would like to have a bit of choice in the market.

- buy a s/h laptop computer with firewire. Possible, but this only puts off the problem until that one dies too.

- use a PCIe firewire system. I already do this at home. The laptop is for mobile multitracking. I am looking into building a micro atx lightweight system with PCIe but then I'd still have to tote around a screen, keyboard and mouse. You can't beat a laptop for portable power. Then I also need to consider whether even PCIe firewire will disappear - I guess it will, while USB seems like it will be here at least for the rest of my lifetime (or while my wizzened fingers can grasp a mouse anyway)

- get one of those double stacked lightpipe systems - I looked at those a while back and that's still a possibilty, but the problem here seems to be the $$$.

Again thanks to all,
TWJ