Hi /diy/, I want to build a very specific thing for my sound

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Hi /diy/,

I want to build a very specific thing for my sound setup.

I'm pretty good with soldering stuff and following instructions as well as doing conversion things - but I never really built anything "from the ground up", so I have a lot of questions but really look forward to do this.

Basically I want to put a soundcard and headphone-amp into one unit, but also want a few special things:

-has to have mic-in
-headphones and (balanced) pre-out have to be usable at the same time
-completely passive but regulatable rca-in to balanced/unbalanced pre-out

(I'm planing to use that with my active speakers that accept balanced in: M-Audio BX8 D2)

of course I could buy a few different devices and chain them together to get all of this working, but why not simply diy my own solution to only have one device and no cable clutter ... also, I want to build it for fun

my plan is to order a bunch of connectors and potentiometers for the front/back panels and some off-the-shelf hardware for the three internal components (which I'd rip apart to arrange their internals in my build, soldering everything together with some wires).

I need help with selecting the right components and especially what kind and resistance of potentiometers I'm going to need.

here's my plan so far:

-audio interface: random decent USB soundcard stick with 3,5mm in and out (any recommendations for a cheap one that doesn't suck? has to be plug'n'play, no drivers)

-headphone amp: a stereo amp kit from ebay or something. the amp obviously needs some power (I haven't put that into the mockup-schematic yet)

-DI unit: likely the Behringer MicroHD HD400, because I have one and it works well


any recommendations for the usb sound card or some other things I haven't considered or should watch out for?