I've been through this now 4 times over the past 20 years of doing home recording.

In my opinion, it's always best to write out what you like about your current way of working, and what you would like to gain access to.

Then that starts out a feature list of what you need to look for.

It could end up that you don't gain anything with purchasing a different piece of gear.

Laptop mic inputs are not really well suited for connection to line outs from mixers.

I would start a list that handles what you want to do from an audio and possibly midi standpoint.

Work from that list. Sweetwater music's catalog makes a great cross-reference table of available interfaces and their capabilities.

Number of channels of microphone pre-amps is often a primary driver for external interfaces. You may not really need any.

I've had great luck with my most recent interface, a Focusrite Scarlett 18i8. I've used every input type it has available now, without any hitches - including it's sample rate re-conversion from SPDIF input. My previous interfaces required that I reset the interfaces sample rate to match the incoming SPDIF input. I run my Bass V-Amp Pro SPDIF out to interface SPDIF in. There was not even a dialog box that I had to look at for this with my Focusrite - it just plain worked.

I was avoiding Focusrite due to their rather 'flexible' mixing applet - but I've not really needed to use it at all. Things are just working as expected (very nice change compared to my TASCAM US-800).

I've used the Pre-amps, the line ins, midi input and SPDIF inputs, along with the main monitoring and heaphone monitoring - all working without a hitch.

But start your own list. What is it that you can't do now that you think will be better on a computer?

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