Does anyone here have experience of the Focusrite Scarlett audio interfaces? These have been highly recommended to me, and I'm veering towards the higher ends of the range - say the 18i8 model, though in the first instance it is very probably significant overkill for my immediate needs.
Primarily these would be used for recording, but it occurs to me that these could also be used as headphone amps, so might be useful "even" only for that purpose. Possibly these would be really good for that.
They could also be used with DAW software to take regular audio (i.e. CD or other inputs) to drive room speakers. With a DAW such as Logic Pro X, this could add in ambience to recordings, which might improve the way the recordings sound - particularly if they are very dry.
One thing I'm not sure about is whether the microphone inputs are mono or stereo. i.e. will take 3 pin cables as well as 5 pin. Actually from the pictures I've seen these look like 3 pin (mono) inputs only - but I haven't used microphones with XLR interfaces before, so I can't be absolutely sure looking at the diagrams and figures on relevant web sites. With the particular 18i8 unit, this has 4 mic XLR inputs - but for mixing are these treated as 2 x stereo - or can the unit actually mix 4 x stereo mic inputs? I'm guessing actually it'll only do 2x stereo, as otherwise there might also have to be balance controls for each input, which I don't see.
Comments on this would be helpful.