My signal wants to go out of my 'puter, to outboard effects, then back to 'puter.
I have limited in/outs left on my soundcard (until I upgrade). I now have:

1 @ S/PDIF I/O (or aes/ebu)
1 @ toslink I/O (this actually acts as a split off the spdif)
2 stereo analog inputs (4ch)

I also have 2 outboard effects I want to use that need routing:

1 @ Lexicon PCM80 (18bit)
1 @ Valley 730 dynamap compressor(20bit)

I'm thinking about two ways to do this:

One is way is use Toslink I/O with the compressor and use the Spdif I/O with the reverb. They will share the same split signal.

Another way is to send the Spdif to an older Lucid ADA1000 (20bit), then send the converted analog signal to a Rane 8ch buffered splitter, which sends signals to the compressor and reverb, then back to the soundcard's analog INs, via the effect's analog I/Os.
The idea for doing it this way is I can recieve the effects on different channels in my host CubaseSL (4 analog INs), plus have 4 extra signal outs (Rane will give me 8 total).

Qs:

1) Are the different bit depths in a chain going to need special attention?
2) If I go with the D/A (second idea), am I using way too many conversions and degrading the signal unnecessarily. (Lucid's D to A, and the effect's 2 internal conversions, then back to soundcard)?

=RR=