I'm confused here. Why do you want to take recorded tracks, output them via D-A converters, put them through a pre-amp, and then re-convert via A-D to new tracks?

I could understand if it were outboard effects units that you wanted to use, when it's pretty standard to run dry signals out of the DAW and wet signals back into it. The wet tracks may need some slight time adjustment to line up correctly with the recorded tracks, but other than that, there is no real quality problem with having the effect signals doing an analog round trip, as the key point is that the dry signal does not go round this loop.

There is not a huge choice of professional audio dual DACs with S/PDIF interface, but the MiniDac does well. There are also quite a few high-end hi-fi units that may be worth considering. However, it would be wise to restrict your choice to those that have +4dBu balanced outputs as an option.

Hi Boswell and thanks for the reply,

I tracked some stuff before I got a UA pre to track with and I just thought that running some of those older tracks through it might help.
Yeah I thought about the slight time delay, my main concern was how much signal degradation and quality loss I would suffer through the MiniMe and miniDac and if any benefit of going out to the UA and back would be negated that way.

Thanks again :-)

You are essentially talking about "reamping" like guitar players sometimes do for various effects. There are devices for this like DW Fearn makes (LP-1) but I don't think you are going to gain anything at all from the UA. The quality of the audio is already set from the inital tracks. You aren't going to add anything to it with the UA so I don't see the benefit. New tracks would benefit, sure. If you are truly serious about outboard preamps then you need to upgrade to PT9 and get a proper multitracking interface. Apogee has a Thunderbolt version of something imminently available and I would think that would be the way for a Mac person to head.