[Justin Bartlett]

Erik-

You make some valid points, but the core question is, which console will provide the best sound within our budget?

The SC48 will be a better-sounding console than the M7CL, I don't doubt that. But which has more effect on our audio - the desk, or the person standing behind the desk? Right now our mixers are all analog, but with digital comes the possibility of training through the virtual soundcheck feature. If that feature is marginal due to channel limitations with the LE interface, but I can get an equivalent working with a full channel count on the M7, which makes the most sense?

I agree that waiting for the channel count to be increased could be worth it if it's happening within a reasonable timeframe, but that presumes that it will happen at all. So far all I've seen from Digidesign on the topic is "yeah, that would be nice."

I'm looking forward to hearing any kind of update from Digidesign about this; the SC48 with an increased LE channel count really would be my ideal scenario for our upgrade.