Dear Community,

Please excuse this newbie question. I do have 2x Octamics II currently at home and I love them.

My goal is to ultimately track 24 channels of 96 khz audio at the lowest latency possible so I can create monitor mixes in my DAW if I need to.
My first idea was to get a Fireface 802 and connect the two Octamics via ADAT (S/MUX) and the other 8 channels with the analog I/O to the Fireface 802 giving me 20 channels at 96 khz.

I now read about the HDSPe RayDAT and it looks very interesting to me.
I know it is possible to run 2x HDSPe RayDAT together. I would then connect 3 Octamics II via the ADAT ins (S/MUX) to the HDSPe RayDATs.

But I have a few questions:

1. Is the latency lower using the HDSPe RayDATs vs the Fireface 802 given RME's stellar USB drivers?
2. Is it possible to use the Octamic II outputs to send sound to monitors and headphones from my DAW? So out of the HDSPe RayDAT into one Octamic II and then out from there?
3. If not, what do I need to ultimately get sound out of the HDSPe RayDAT into monitors and headphones?

Thanks for all your help