Going through should be fine - It depends on what happens to it on the way...

3 gears to master ???

thanks john for your reply ...well what i wanted to do was use all three of them to do mastering .like from the motu 828 to the ddp and use the ddp for a littel pre mastering then send it to the finalizer 96k for the rest of the mastering and then to the masterlink to burn on cd at 24bits and use some of the presets in there to warm it up befor its fineshed please tell me what you think .thanks max

That just seems like an awful lot of processing... Most of the time, less is more. Unless there's a specific reason to go through all of that, I'd try to find out what box serves you best and use it the best you can.

thanks john thats what i was thinking also just didnt know for sure ..if you hade the same gear and you probely do and then some .what would you use each one for before the final burn to cd. and once again thank you very much for your help an advice

Well, this is just my opinion, so take it as you will...

When I listen to a track, I try to "visualize" what it *should* sound like when it's done.

Then, I try to figure out what it's going to need, take a guess at some rough settings, start playback again and tweak.

I'd just try that on both units (the DSP in the Masterlink just does nothing for me) and see which one sounds closest to what's in your head.

thank you john i will try it that way then . i see that you have a masterlink in your studio also do you use it just to record the music or do you use it for anything else . thanks

Mostly just playback - I'll drag it out for live-to-two-track though...

When I do any mixing here (very rare, but it happens) I might mix to it. But I might not also.

The masterlink is a good playback device. I use mine as a player. I take all of the files for a project, sometimes they very in bit and sample rates, and I create a CD 24 on my computer that will playback from the masterlink. I then route that out aes, run through my gear, SRC'ing and dithering down into my workstation. All done in one shot. For this, it works great.

thank you john and Michael you both have been great help.