firewire in general...

[Almy]

Not a major point, but I'd like to point out that this is something to be careful of - a lot of people seem to be grabbing up these trend of mixers with a little a/d section built in thinking that they'll be a suitable "interface" for them, and finding out that they only transfer a stereo channel of digital information. Perhaps not all of such things, but for anyone who's looking at these, most of them don't actually transfer anywhere near that number of tracks - just a mixer with a low-quality add-on.

That's just the USB problem, which is what we're pointing out.

Alesis 12 channel Firewire mixer (I have one) records 12 channels as 12 individual tracks in the software.

Alesis 12 channel USB mixer records 12 channels as 2 condensed tracks in the software.

Which is the whole point. Firewire is better at sustained data transfer than USB. Again though, I haven't tested any USB 2.0 devices.