Using a mixer?

I have two setups with analog mixers.
1. Beringher MX9000 with a Tascam US 1800 that I use recording drums and to monitor out to headphone recording. But in the passed I have set it up a million ways... I'm trying to move away from the drum MX9000 setup for something smaller. But last time I got rid of my MX 9000 I ended up missing it and got another one. lol
 
2. I use an old 1642 VLZ Pro (great color) with a Tascam US 12 for GTR, BASS and Vocals.
 

I used to use an 8-channel mixer that ran through a stereo signal into my computer.
It was great for quick setup:  2 channels for my drum machine, 1 for bass guitar, 1 for electric guitar, 1 for keyboard, 1 for a vocal mic, and 2 that I didn't use.  I kept cables plugged into each input, and had the controls set for my "standard input sound."  When I wanted to record something, I didn't have to mess around.  Simply turn on my DAW and grab whatever instrument I was looking for.
 
Now that my studio has evolved into a laptop on my wife's sewing table in the spare bedroom, I don't have a mixer.  But I miss it.

My thing with mixers and any external gear is the components used to build these items.
No matter what we have (Software) it can never match the high grade components (caps, diodes, exc) in hardware. In other words in this day and age we live in, we are relying on a pc motherboard to house all the necessary electrics needed to produce sounds that high grade parts once used. It will never happen. it can come close in the mimicking stages, but it cant replicate and there is a huge difference in my opinion between mimicking and replicating.

Your best bang for buck is front end hardware and a patchbay, or inline with a summing mixer.  While a mixer is nice and very organizational, you have to spend some major bucks for quality and to get that big-studio sound.  And while most boards and whatnot are transparent not to damage your signal, a Mackie won't give that electronic goodness or the umph one gets from tracking on an old neve or the mix buss on an SSL.  Just a professional preamp with good components that will last a long long time start about $400 to however large your bank account is.  How many of those things can you put into a $500 mixing board?  Again, a low-cost board isn't going to ruin your signal but isn't going to wow you with its sound, either.
 
I've found that good outboard going in really helps me get better recordings.  Of course, I'm a better engineer than musician, so I don't have to spend money on expensive guitars and other such nonsense (tho my guitarist does) and I haven't even bought any new soft synths for a while.  Again, an interface pre is perfectly fine for most recording duties, I've found but a nice external unit adds just a hint of air around the recording, a transformer thickening and component excitement that separates each sound itself out in a mix.
 
For my money, a summing mixer and good outboard gets one the best sound, if you don't have enough room (and money) for a new or old Neve.

When I was running SONAR on an underpowered Windows XP PC, I used my Mackie mixer all the time. I could overdub tracks with zero latency by monitoring in the mixer even if I had to run SONAR at high latency settings to keep it from choking. Plus, the mic pres on the Mackie sounded better than the ones on my old Delta 1010LT.
 
Now that I have a more powerful PC and better sounding pres on my audio interface, I hardly use the mixer at all. Latency hasn't been an issue so far, though my projects don't have high track counts or large numbers of soft synths. But I have the room, so I'm in no hurry to get rid of the mixer.
 

I have 2 mixers, a 24 and a 32 track, sitting in storage wasting away. Once I got to affording powerful computers, the mixers just got in the way of the workflow. I do agree that a great analog mixer is a joy to listen to but the absence of them has hardly been noticable. 

I use a digital mixer. But I don't mix with it. 
It's sort of a central station everything runs thru.
I think I would miss that convenience but I've looking for smaller footprint alternatives.

timidi
I use a digital mixer. But I don't mix with it. 
It's sort of a central station everything runs thru.
I think I would miss that convenience but I've looking for smaller footprint alternatives.

I used to do the same thing until I bought a Mackie big knob.
I cant tell you how much easier it has made things. 2 presses of a button and I can go from monitoring on my KRK's to my JBL's. I also send a mono mix in to my drum room through pa speakers and use talk back through that.
At first I had heard the BK colored the sound so was a little hesitant, but I found only if you crank up the pre amps on the BK you get some color. I also have a TC leveling pilot which is totally passive and to be honest I cant tell the difference. I ditched the TC leveling pilot because it only had room for 1 set of monitors. I have 3 (2 for near field / 1 for drum room, recording)