I was just reorganising my audio gear and was thinking of making good use of my I/O by putting more outboard gear in more loops instead of plugging stuff in every time I switch sources. Then in Totalmix I can have an incoming source signal get routed back out to a unit, then back in the UFX, then route out to another unit, back in, maybe out to another, then record the results of that. Rather than plugging stuff in and out all the time, would mean I can just choose what to use and what outboard things are in my signal chain by just using the flexible routing in TotalMix, and don’t have to move wires about.

But then I was thinking, is the internal mixing analog or digital? I presume it’s digital? So would that mean me going:
In - a to d
Out to unit 1 - d to a
In from unit 1 - a to d
Out to unit 2 - d to a
In from unit 2 - a to d
Out to unit 3 - d to a
In from unit 3 - d to a

So is this ease of plan actually meaning instead of a single A to D conversion process, I’d be adding an additional 6 analog to digital or vice-versa steps, and hence be unnecessarily degrading my audio, when I could just wire all the stuff up out front, then just record the lot in with a single conversion process?

I guess it’d add some latency too, although I presume not nearly as bad as going into a computer and back out, so I assume that’s pretty much negligible. But I can’t see 6 unnecessary extra conversions doing the signal quality a world of good? Thoughts?