Need advice on setting up my studio

So, here's the deal. I have a fair pile of klobber and have been really enjoying my time making things after the learning curve of working in full hardware. 

My dream is as follows -- I need to be able to find a mixing situation where I can route all my synths to a mixer and into Live 9. What is the best way to go about this. I would need a 16 track mixer for sure with how much stuff I end up piling into tracks. The idea would be to sculpt the sounds and use the preamps/eq/love from a decent analog mixer, then run outs to a 16 channel audio interface to record into ableton in big chunks. 

Is this possible? Should I just try to find a mixer that can just be an audio interface? Should I run an analog board with individual outs to an interface? Should I switch DAW's? Is there a better way to do this?

I like to jam live. I thought to myself that if I could get all my tracks recording on separate channels into Live, I can potentially just make tons of jams that are all sequenced to the DAW's clock for further editing and arranging. Recording sequenced gear one track at a time then sequencing it in a DAW is tedious and really loses the life you get from running it all at once and sculpting ideas/tracks from it. That way I can also preserve the sound of everything on separate channels so that if something needs tweaking or a part ran on for too long because I was setting something up on the fly and then chop it all up in places for edits/effect fuckery and be cool n such.

Opinions? I know this is a mouthful and probably way easier than I'm making it seem, but I never went to school for this shit and there aren't many answers I can pull from google for this!

My hardware list is 

tr-707

Emx-1

tr-606

DSI pro-2

Rytm

Modded Jx-3p/Pg200 combo

minilogue 

(soon to be) monologue

((all of them have sequencers and play very nice with each other, so that's also neat))

and a few outboard things here or there along with guitars, bass, glockenspiel, crazy percussion stuff and an assortment of thumb-pianos

gumbo dispenser.

pinball maschine and a grab em by the pizza

get one of these as well;

Patchbays! The best part of any studio with more than a handful of gear.

That way you have all options covered.

I can jam through my mixer, when I feel I should start recording jam or elements I can record main outs, sub groups or re patch in seconds to my interface, or even to tape. Whatever! anything is possible.

  On 11/9/2016 at 1:05 PM, Djeroek said:

get one of these as well;

 

the chair or the girl?

Make sure you get a mechanical keyboard so you can type better / faster

  On 11/9/2016 at 1:11 PM, Chesney said:

Patchbays! The best part of any studio with more than a handful of gear.

That way you have all options covered.

 

I can jam through my mixer, when I feel I should start recording jam or elements I can record main outs, sub groups or re patch in seconds to my interface, or even to tape. Whatever! anything is possible.

Yeah, but that really means nothing in my head. I know what a patchbay is, but I have no idea how to use anything above a laptop and shitty interface (aside from the pile of gear)...  So I'd just need a mixer with individual outs, patchbay and a 16-in interface or whatever # channels I'd need? I'd really prefer to record each channel separately if at all possible, maybe bounce the drums down to a subgroup, but even still, I want full control over editing everything in a DAW with as little tedium as possible. 

why get a separate mixer and interface, could you not just get a mixer with a built-in interface that has the inputs you need?

or alternatively a usb interface with built-in preamps opposed to a mixer.

either would save you having two devices.

I have a similar setup to what you're describing.

I'm using the inserts on my epm12 with half-plugged cables (like direct outs) into a Saffire pro40. I also have a patchbay. My advice is read some articles and learn what normal/thru/half normal means. I got a hosa 48pt patchbay for like $60. It takes a little while to conceive of a setup but at bare minimum it gives you the inputs and outputs of all your effects in one easy location.

There are new mixers that are also 16 or more i/o. The a&h qu 16 comes to mind but it's so expensive, and I don't want all of the digital mixer preset recall. I want simple inputs with volume and eq, I'll do the rest in ableton.

Then you can make a default live set with all your gear set up in their own channels, and patch hardware fx inserts in with your patch bay, all while running on abletons clock.

if you want your instruments on their own channels youre going to need a lot of inputs. one solution is to buy a smaller audio interface that has optical ADAT in, and buy something like that behringer A/D converter (ada8200?) to expand your inputs. otherwise you just need a bigass audio interface.

also, using something like a mixer with multiple buses/sends can let you group several inputs together into single channels, so you wouldn't only have your stereo master outputs but actually have the mix broken into chunks you record individually

Mixer -> direct outs -> interface

Or just get a Mackie with FireWire interface you can even get one that can output back to the channels

  On 11/9/2016 at 6:42 PM, QQQ said:

why get a separate mixer and interface, could you not just get a mixer with a built-in interface that has the inputs you need?

 

or alternatively a usb interface with built-in preamps opposed to a mixer.

 

either would save you having two devices.

I haven't seen too many that were under 1600 for what I'm looking for. Do you know of any good models? The idea behind a separate mixer and interface is to have the sound of an analog board just being barfed in as a multi-track to a DAW. Not that I know enough about the differences in sound, it's just that the idea of a mixer separate from my interface seemed cooler. 

  On 11/10/2016 at 10:05 AM, miim said:

Mixer -> direct outs -> interface

 

Or just get a Mackie with FireWire interface you can even get one that can output back to the channels

I've been thinking about ^^this^^ as my best option. I'm going to get a patchbay once I get some more outboard gear, this one is more important. 

  On 11/10/2016 at 10:13 AM, peace 7 said:

How did you find me in my studio? All that gear and I still can't figure out how to record 16 tracks at once from my blip-bloop 80's dance machines!@@@

  On 11/9/2016 at 1:11 PM, Chesney said:

Patchbays! The best part of any studio with more than a handful of gear.

That way you have all options covered.

 

I can jam through my mixer, when I feel I should start recording jam or elements I can record main outs, sub groups or re patch in seconds to my interface, or even to tape. Whatever! anything is possible.

ditto. patch bays are great. you can set them up so it's just all your i/o in easy reach and do whatever you need to do. it's a bit more money because more cables but it makes life easier and you can do some fun stuff w/routing as well.