This is also really interesting.
Same here.
Livetrak L-12 is possibly my most important piece of equipment. Whenever I stumble upon a good thing I press rec on it and save it for later. Sometimes I track straight to Reaper from it, sometimes I record without the computer and take the wav-files from the SD-card to my DAW and process them there. Livetrak is very versatile and just lovely.
I have everything (including my fx pedals) hooked up to a patchbay and I route the signal the way I need it to go in each situation.
I only have one hardware synth at the moment and it’s an Access Virus B. I use Ableton Live for every song I write. The Virus is going into a little mixer and into my audio interface. I have an External Instrument track set up in Live which is being routed to a synth buss track. Nothing fancy.