Yes, I do want to be able to add effects. We only have one hardware reverb/effects unit and a couple graphic EQ units that we could use. We use the channel EQ on our current board (so that would need to be supplied with whatever we replace it with) and we don't currently have any compressors.... So those will be an added benifite.
I dug up some more info on the O2R and found a giant diagram of the top view:
http://www.yamaha.com/yamahavgn/Images/ProAudio/Product/Views/02rv2_front_l.gif
From what I can tell, it looks like it has bank switching on only 4 faders, so we'll always have instant access to the first 16 faders PLUS 4 of the other faders. Right? When I was just looking at a small picture of the mixer, I thought those four colored faders were for controlling submix busses, but if it is actually controlling 4 additional input channels, then that's even better!
For our needs 20 faders would work perfectly and hopefully we won’t even have to worry about bank switching during the music.... We will probably need extra channels for misc stuff like CD-player and computer/multimedia for videos, etc... but for mixing the music that should be more than enough.
I'm trying to figure out the other functions too from looking at the mixer, and I like the EQ layout. The screen will also be very handy for tweaking effects I'm sure.
I also see two rows of "sel" and "on" buttons on each channel, why two rows? Does one control effects and the other control aux sends or something?
Anyways, I will send an email to our worship pastor homefully sometime tomorrow with the link and info I have found on it. It sounds very promising now that I have found a good quality mixer within our price range I agree that this would be the better setup. I just didn't think something like this was possible as it seemed all the larger digital consoles were way out of budget.
Thanks for the suggestion, I'm getting very excited about this.
-tkr