Using MPC One as a brain for external hardware + effects

Hey folks, long time lurker/first time poster here.

I recently got an MPC One to act as a brain to sequence all of my hardware that I've been amassing over the years. I'm not a fan of doing live sets using a DAW and am hoping to transition to just using the MPC, my synths and my drum machine. I'm planning on getting a mixer to run my MPC and the gear through so I can finesse levels and so on.

My main gripe/concern is that the MPC doesn't appear to be able to track more than one audio source/channel at any given time. If I put it into sampler mode, it can only track one selected input input. If I were to get a mixer, would there be any way to feed the synth channels from the mixer to the MPC to add effects/plugins & then back to the same chanel on the mixer (some sort of 'bi-directional' FX send and return channels?)

Hope I'm making sense! Peace

You should have a read of the class compliancy thread regarding which audio interfaces are tested and working correctly with the new firmware, if you use one of those in standalone mode you can have up to 32 in and out channels.. there are quite a few decent YouTube videos covering the process also..

I thought I couldnt record multiple audio tracks from different input sources at the same time as well but i was wrong. To test:

Start a new project.
Go to track view, add a second audio track.
Click the monitor to "merge" on both audio tracks.
Select the differeing inputs for each audio track.
Press and hold shift and touch the record arm red circle on both audio tracks.

When you press record it will record both audio tracks from the sources you've set.

Tip, since the mpc only has two inputs you can split them as mono inputs between tracks in the track view window. Which is prefectly acceptable for a combo of items, a guitar and a mic, a monosynth and guitar, whatever.

You can literally run an entire fully digital, or analog digital combo or all analog band through the mpc and process the fx / capture it all its really neat.