I've been thinking about expanding my home studio with some preamp- and EQ-modules, and thought I would share my thinking here, in case I've forgotten something obvious, or should consider other alternatives.
To give a bit of context: My home studio consists of various Eurorack modules, synthesizers and a laptop running Ableton Live. All go into patchbay where I duplicate the audio signals into A and B; A goes into a 10-track mixer with 12 channels (two of the tracks are stereo), and B goes into ES-9 (except the audio from the laptop - I don't need to record this separately). The sum of the mixer is then recorded using Focusrite 2i2 3rd gen.
This means I end up recording 2 channels of wet stereo from the mixer (as the mixer have an Aux channel that sends to a reverb pedal), and up 10 dry channels (in the sense that they haven't been mixed with the reverb pedal), resulting from the 9 remaining tracks after removing the track for the laptop.
A problem with the current setup is that the ES-9 is designed for audio from Eurorack modules, so instruments that send Line signals will be low. This hasn't been a to big of a problem for me, as I've limited myself to only use these single tracks to "back up" certain parts of the mix (to enhance certain parts, etc). But it's been an annoyance, and I've decided that I want to try to find a solution.
Another part of the context is the form factor that I want to use for this: I used to have a DFAM that I sadly lost because of a drunken mistake during a jam (sidenote: you should always label your power cords), but I still use its case to house various modules. It fits very neatly next to the mixer, it houses the ES-9 currently, and I would like to continue using it as rack for this solution. So that means one row of 60hp.
After some iterations I've ended up with the following:
With this setup I can boost and adjust EQ for 12 channels. The limitation is that only 4 channels can be individually adjusted, so the remaining 8 are probably best used for stereo, which is ok for me. The idea is to have all tracks (except the stereo channel used by the laptop) be routed through the various preamps and EQs (the laptop will go "directly" to the mixer via the main outputs of the ES-9) to the patchbay, where the signals are duplicated, one going back to the ES-9 and the other into the mixer (which also returns a stereo channel to the ES-9).
Granted, signals coming from Eurorack modules directly won't have much need for the gain modules, so I could drop some there, but I'm ok with having some redundant modules from time to time if that means that the final design is simpler to comprehend.
I also think I need to boost the signal coming from the mixer (something the 2i2 handles for me today), so the left-most BaxandallEQ is designated the sum-signal from the mixer. Alternatively I could still use the 2i2 for this, but I would like to free up this for other purposes.
An alternative to this is to go with something much simpler, like the Focusrite 18i20. The drawback of this is that if I want to have 12 channels (to match the mixer) I would have to buy an extension. (That said, it would probably still be cheaper than the solution above.) But I would not get the EQ-functionality, and in the solution above all channels have their own gain knob, which I appreciate.
Again, I appreciate any feedback. I recognize my setup can be somewhat confusing, but I hope I was able to convey how it works, and how I would like it to work ^_^
Edit 1: Added some context regard the size of the rack.