Hi,
I'm new to home recording. Following is the list of my current hardware/software.

- KN7000 keyboard connected to laptop (P4, 3GHz, 512MB RAM) via USB
- Roland VA-7 keyboard connected to KN7000
- Acid Pro 5 software.

I've recently put together some drum loops into Acid for a song. I want to add strings, guitar e.t.c from the keyboards and maybe some vocals. Follwoing are my concerns.

1- Since i don't have a mixer, i can not monitor the drums playback while i add/record tracks from keyboard or the worst, add vocals using mic input in KN7000. Do i really need a mixer to do this ?

2- If YES, which mixer?, i'm looking into Yamaha's o1x, but have heard a lot about mLan issues. Any suggestions ? My other concern is if o1x would let me control Acid Pro 5 from the control surface ?

3- What is the practice in pro recording world, should you always record from a workstation synthesizer with digital outputs or you can record from a keyboard like Roland VA-7 using 1/4 pin analog connection ? The reason i'm asking this is, because i'm thinking maybe i should sell the two keyboards i have and buy one which would give a digital interface. (even though KN700 has USB interface but i don't like its voices as compared to VA-7).

awaiting for help/comments..

farhan.