Trying this here… Is Apple the only way to go for multi channel recording? Or has anyone had success with a windows based laptop that doesnt need ASIO drivers. Is this even possible? Using a Zoom l8.
No. Multi-channel recording is supported on all platforms. The problem on Windows is that very few sound cards have multi-channel Windows drivers. Most multi-channel sound card have multiple stereo (2-channel) drivers rather than a single multi-channel driver.
On Linux and macOS, even if the drivers are not multi-channel, it is relatively easy to combine multiple stereo drivers as an “aggregate device” (combine the stereo drivers into a single multi-channel device). That’s a lot more difficult to do on Windows and requires additional software. I believe that some of the “VB-Audio” products are able to do that (possibly the “donationaware” Voicemeeter program - I don’t use this myself as I’m on Linux).