Topic: Hypothetical live theater recording setup with HDSPe AES and a Mac Pro

Hi guys, first post here.   By the way, nice beating-a-dead-horse emoticon, it made me laugh out loud. :-)


Anyway, on to this possible setup.  I am thinking about ways to set up a new mixing and recording system for my school's theater, including new Shure wireless lapels, a new mixer, some basic effects like a compressor, . I'm currently looking at a 40 channel Soundcraft MH2 analog mixer which is almost overkill, but has everything we could ever want, including direct outs for every channel. My idea from there is to use a Mac Pro with three HDSPe AES cards to be able to record every single channel at once, at optimal quality. Now for some questions:

I want to know a little about the actual way that the card works. For example, could you run a total of 16 inputs to the card using two cables like this one by Hosa? I saw that the card has a total of 16 ins and outs, but can you have them be all inputs?  P.S. After reading over the product page again I'm realy confused about the channels in general HeadScratch , anybody care to explain?

Thanks in advance!