yes, but you can use non-adjascent ports with standard 3.5mm audio cables - if you are that bothered, assume it's a 3 channel board with an option to upgrade to 6 if you buy the special cables.
They could have brilliantly designed their way out of that by making the whole thing ~1.5cm wider (3mm extra five times).
A zoom h6 is a well designed portable battery powered mixer / audio interface with 4 easily accessible inputs and two that might need an adaptor depending on your cabling. It also comes with two high quality microphones, and records without being tethered to another device. For $409
Balanced inputs are useful for cancelling noise in long cable runs. There are no long cable runs if your target audience is people making aesthetic 60s instagram videos of their “synth jam in nature” with $2000 of gear in shot and $2000 more to film it.
Exactly. This is the type of equipment to appear in shot of your recording studio YouTube video not the kind of thing you find back of house at a professional setup.