Ahh ok guys, I just assumed that the newer boxes still had the THRU connections like the old boxes, not just digital passthrough. I guess that is so that you can still use the effects and stuff? I dunno.. it seems like an inferior solution since, even if you have a high end analog mixer, you would be stuck with whatever preamp Serato gives you in their box, plus extra conversions to digital and back to analog and the latency implied by that. I guess it works well enough that people are satisfied with that. But would have been nice for them to keep those connections available in case people want to use them.

But in this case, since the Numark isn't likely to have preamps any better than what's in the Serato box, it's no big deal.. and more convenient.