Our search for a small-footprint high performance digital desk came to a successful conclusion with the addition of a Yamaha LS9-16 to our hire stock. The smallest LS9 has a great feature set in a compact package, very similar functionally to the Yamaha M7CL, but capable of fitting in a 19inch rack.
The basic desk has 16 analogue mic/line channels and 8 analogue outputs, enough for many small jobs on it's own, but easily expandable using a Mini-YGDAI card.
We have assembled an ultra-compact 24-channel conference audio front of house solution using a 3U CD/Minidisc player and a 1U 8-channel A/D+D/A module plus the LS9. This reduces our front of house footprint to a fraction of the size that an analogue desk solution would need, with the excellent audio quality of Yamaha digital desks.