Hi Jackson,
I was thinking in a similar way and ended up with the SQ6+Dante card & DX168. Near future upgrade will be UAD Live rack + Focusrite Rednet d64r for easy dante patching of external I/O and UAD Processing inserts.
You can of course go the Waves direction in a similar fashion. This way you are future proof with Dante, don’t have to spend extra on the stagebox because it’s a bit cheaper with Slink. AND most importantly you can easily patch and route everything. You can also create tie-lines between the Slink stagebox directly to Dante. To set stagebox gain/48v/pad you do have to (temporarily) patch the channel on the mixer.
This also creates an easy upgrade path according to budget;
1: Mixer + dx168
2: Dante card for easy external I/O, think streaming/laptops I/O via ethernet (from other places in the building)
3: External Processing via Dante
4: Extra Slink DX168 (loop through) AND/OR Dante DT168 for I/O
Enjoy your system, whatever you choose!
