Need More Audio Channels - Which Way To Go?, Upgrade Korg D8, buy M-Audio 410 or...? Options

[wizeman]

Hi all.

Using a modest home-rig (Kawai K4, Korg 03R/W, AKAI S2000, Alesis MidiverbII and some Phonic 16ch mixer) I today record the Midi using Cubase (what can I say, I like it...) under OS Xon my iMac G4/800. The actual Audio recording is done on the very nice but now rather dated Korg D8. It's an eight track HD recorder that has treated me well.

Thing is, I need more channels. It's getting old this doing submix after submix after submix just to free up channels, and often leads to me having to go back and redo it because some voice or other from the first submix is to weak in the end.

So what do I do? Buy a new stand-alone HD recorder? Eyeing the D1600 or perhaps D2424. Or do I get a rack-mounted HD-recorder that can be controlled fully from the software (Cubase?) and if so, what should I be looking for? Or (Door Number Three) a FireWire M-Audio 410 interface to start using the iMac G4/800 as an all-purpose machine? I don't know that much about the limitations (how many Audio tracks can I use simultaneously on that setup without the quality suffering etc) so to me it's all apples and oranges.

Any advice at all would be very helpful.

Thankyou.