- 2 analog outputs to the pair of monitors...
- 2 analog inputs for a turntable in future, maby a dedicated ad converter for future, but I dought it since the Lynx has great quality already...only thing next is mayby an external reverb for good vocal effects. (I can always plug in and out to make it work do to a lack of In's if I do everything one step at a time.)
- 2 midi I/O will go to a keyboard and have the rest extras for future...does a sound module require a slot? do I need a sound module to use a keyboard? Does a sound module not use a midi In.
- 24-bit/96 kHz AES/EBU or S/PDIF I/O will go to the preamp to a mic for recording...???????? this will leave me with an extra in or out for soemthing.
OK, just remember the following:
1. Once you run out of ins or outs for whatever you're doing and you find something you can't multitrack, you are fucked.
2. Unless your mic pre also has an A/D converter or you buy a separate external A/D converter your mic pre will use an analog in.
3. When you're tracking vocals you will want to monitor that in headphones and unless you have a [hardware] mixer this will use 2 outs (there are ways to do it with one, though), so with the Lynx you will have to be unplugging/plugging in your monitors/headphones.
4. Anything that makes "noise" (which is most likely what your music will be) requires an analog in. MIDI I/Os do not record or even transmit the "sound," just the sequence. So you need 2 analog ins for any keyboards or sound modules.
So, now do you see why its important to have enough analog ins/outs? Honestly, most new consumer soundcards can be made to do 4 in 4 out (sometimes in stereo pairs which isn't too great) and there are a plethora of very good sounding prosumer cards with at least 4 in 4 out (most are much cheaper than the Lynx, BTW) so really there's no reason to limit yourself. But you seem to want to do it, so go ahead, just don't come crying to me when you run out of "holes" to plug into!
Honestly I think you're in way over your head. You at least should have owned and used
A sound card for recording at some point in your history before you move to something like the Lynx. I honestly don't think you know what your needs are and no amount of me telling you that you're a dumbass is going to remedy this. To use a gay expression, you need to have some "hands-on" experience with something before you know enough about it to spend $500 on an upgrade (wait, not even an upgrade, your first damn card). That seems to be just common sense, applicable to a lot of things other than sound cards, but its just one man's opinion.
EDIT: OK, I took yet more of my
precious time to read through the reviews posted on the Lynx website. To be honest, I wasn't terribly impressed. I have read similar reviews about just about all of its competitors. BTW, here's an interesting quote from the
Pro Audio Review article:
Converter technology has finally reached a place where most 24-bit cards in this price range offer extremely good performance for project and pro-studio applications.
I think that pretty much sums it up. There's nothing magical about the Lynx. It uses standard Crystal converters that are used by almost all prosumer-level cards. Also, I think every reviewer referred to the Lynx as a "mastering card." For that purpose it would work very well. With a highly-accurate digital interface and 2 good channels of analog I/Os that's the logical use for this card. That's what sonusman uses his for, from what I gather. Its simply not billed as a multitrack recording card because that's not what it does. It can be made to do that but with an extremely limiting 2 in 2 out interface, it hardly competes with actual multitrack cards in this function.
So priz, if you can deal with the 2 in 2 out limitation (and you want to get ripped off) then go for it. In my not-so-humble opinion you are going to be reaching for more I/Os pretty soon and wishing you had gone with a cheaper solution, but if you want to risk that go ahead. I think I've been pretty objective (up to a point) but you're trying my patience in helping you and I think its just time to do something.
I deffinitely don't wanna become a gear snob before I even have anything, or have even tried anything...