Reply To: Question about number of inputs and DAW integration

[Andreas]

The Qu isn’t that flexible regarding input routing. You can stream 32 channels from the DAW back to the Qu, but these are hard-mapped to each of the 32 input faders. There is a selection per channel if it is fed from local analog input, dSnake input or “USB input”. “USB input” can be switched globally between 32 channels coming from the DAW or 16+2 channels from the QuDrive (top usb connector).
Or, to be clear, you can not route any feed from the DAW to any of the stereo inputs.
The Qu32 has a total of 32+3*2 inputs, which is 38, but it can stream 40 (freely assignable) channels to the ME-1 subsystem.
The custom layer is used to re-organize faders, for example to combine some channels along with groups, st-ins and DCAs to be accessible without switching layers. It does not add more input sources.
Not sure why you want to record using the Metric Halo interface. The Qu internally already operates within the digital domain and 32 (assignable) channels are directly recordable into the DAW. The signals won’t improve with an external DAC or AES-to-whatever converter (remember the Qu does not provide a word clock output!).