May I draw your attention on the right hand side of my desk to my shiny new Alesis MultiMix12 Firewire mixing desk...
Very cool bit of kit, not only is it a mixing desk but pumps directly into the computer via Firewire so no loss of audio from desk to computer... Not only, but also, it works as a sound card (sort of) too so I can pump output direct from the computer into the desk...
Shiny eh!
Fwarrr!