depends on YOUR needs....i would say more than 24 is too much for anyone.....more than 8 would be too much for me.....right now i have 4 and im content.....
I bought a Darla24, because I only work with Synths and violin, and I do all my stuff by myself. I would never need anything more than that ever in my life, that is all I need, end of story.
D'oh! I am stupid. I now have a string band, needing 4+ inputs, Maybe even 8 eventually. I am stuck with 2. I should have gotten more. Plan ahead.
I personally haven't ever felt the need to use more than the 4 that I have, BUT flexability is nice. The only limiting factor is really what your computer can handle.
it POSSIBLY comes down to how you like to track drums...and if there are other tracks going down at the same time as them. Most serious "hobbyists" doing solo stuff can usually be happy with a decent stereo input...or maybe 4.
If you're recording on yer own, I'd say 4. This also allows another dude to play along. If you want to track a band, I'd say >8. Especially if you ever want to track drums...
Too many? Hmm.....I'd say that 1000 would be too many, because they'd take up a lot of space...500 would be pretty hard to manage as well, depending on how well the system was implemented
Basically, if we're talking all "theoretically", then the answer is you can never have too many. Why would you limit yourself?
A better question would be, "how many is not enough...."
I'd say that 2 is not enough, and 4 is really limiting. Eight seems to be reasonable for a home studio, but I'd be perfectly happy with 16 or 24.
Of course that's assuming we're talking about inputs into a decent system
99.9% of anything I can think of recording could be done with 16 inputs or less. I mean, even if you want to record a full rock band with close-miking all the drums and assuming you want to capture the live guitar and bass tracks I'd have trouble finding intelligent ways to use more than that. And if you are using a sound card that relies on the host CPU for processing (ie not protools, etc.) I doubt that you could record much more than say 32 tracks (24/44.1) simultaneously even with a top-of-the-line machine - and that would probably be pushing it.
I have an 8 in / 8 out Gadget Labs card, and I was originally planning on buying two to link up for 16 tracks. Fortunately I'm getting along fine with 8 since Gadget Labs has gone bye-bye. Also my drummer usually records witha Roland electronic kit which makes things WAY easy. When using a real kit I have to do a sub-mix down to two inputs. Since we do a lot of "Live in the studio" recording I need 5 or 6 ins most of the time. If I were stuck with 4 I could get by, it would be two drums + bass + guitar with everything else being overdubbed
GNARLED
It's probably not for using simutaniously...
Sometimes people like to keep everything plugged in at there finger tips... It's actually a good Idea...
Then and again, maybe Track Rat has a different reason... Just thought I would add my 2 cents...
I used to have the drum mach L+R and Keys L+R and POD L+R and all the drum mics and vox mix and even a patch for the bass, all plugged in ready to go.....