Mixers

I'm looking to buy a moving-fader control surface for my DAW and I'm wondering if it's worth paying a bit extra for one with touch-sensitive faders. How important a feature is this?

Yamaha's 01X is a digital mixer, hardware controller, audio and MIDI interface that promises an unprecedented level of integration with PC/Mac computer-based DAWs. But can this one silver box really do it all?

Yamaha pack most of an 02R96 into a unit little bigger than the 01V96. Could this be the ideal console for the quality home studio?

I was told by a sound engineer that, when mixing, it is not a good practice to have all the channel volume faders way up and to have the master fader down, and that this applies both to analogue and digital consoles. Is this true?