To answer your notes, so far -
This seems to be its primary use case, actually. I’ve recorded two tracks now, one of them quite complex as far as structure and sound scape goes. The eq, fx and summing all work really well together and the compressor squeezes it nicely into a coherent whole. Since you can name each take from each track as you please, exporting to daw is very easy if you just want to use this to record multiple tracks at once and then take it elsewhere. But there’s no doubt I can use this for final mixing, in the contexts where I’m active.
Like the Blackbox, the Bluebox has a very generous headroom and once you start working the tracks with the eq and fx, it really opens up. I’ve only used it in limited context so far, but it’s been around potential disturbing outside sources such as other gear, lots of lighting, computers and television sets and stuff, and there’s no noise going on as far as I can tell. I’d describe the overall character as clean and crisp, with the onboard fx, eq and compressor designed to enhance that. Especially the eq is pretty flexible as far as shaping the track goes, I suppose you could approach it as a sound designer’s tool (like the fx, but I’ll get to that in time), but I get the vibe this mixer has no character, but expects your source material to supply all that. Which is exactly how I like it for recording and mixing.
Nothing on midi yet, haven’t tried it, but it seems to be about clock only and potentially (I presume) synced recording. But I don’t know yet. There is a “Learn” function in place, but so far, it doesn’t seem to do anything.
@Lum as far as fx goes, you can approach this in two ways - the internal ones, which you can route to any of the tracks at any level, and also balance the levels between the dry and wet track, to transform anything that sounds ordinary into ambient reverb delay crazy mayhem lush. External fx seems to work as such that you assign the second output to your favourite external source and then just route that back into one of the inputs, on a separate track, where you can record the results or just enjoy them as is, live.