@JimHowell1970 - thanks for all your replies, really appreciate your helping me along with my confusion on all this :)
If I get the ES-8...thats all I need in order to us CV Tools in Ableton Live to send/receive CV? Is it doing that via the USB?
correct
Then for recording stuff coming from my modular/Hydrasynth, I could use the combination of the ciao and a-520 to route audio to my Focusrite?...do i have all of that right?
yes if you can get both interfaces to work simultaneously - do a search on asio4all and working with multiple audio interfaces - I'm not an expert - especially as I use a Mac - where aggregate devices work quite well
If I substitue the Ciao! with the Intellijel Audio Interface II, would that allow me to route audio into the modular setup from my Hydrasynth for any processing and then back out to my Focusrite?
yes potentially - there are many other ways to do this though - personally I'd start with veils and some attenuators
According to their website all Focusrite ¼ inch (6.35mm) jack inputs and outputs are mono balanced.
-- jb61264
In which case a balanced output module sounds like a good idea - most probably aren't balanced - Happy Nerding do a reasonably priced unbalanced to balanced converter module called the isolator - if you find you need it
"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia
Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!
sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities