How Many Line-Level Components?

[techbiker]

I'm having trouble determining how many sound-modifying components I should purchase before I start seeing degraded audio quality. At the moment, I have a M-Audio Profire 610 dumping line-level audio out to a Crown Com-tech 400 that I have modified with larger filter capacitors.

I do move my equipment every so often though and dynamics are usually off a bit. For example, while I am in college, I have everything in a very small dorm room (maybe 10ft by 20ft). When I'm back at home, my room is three times the size. Regardless, this really affects dynamics and I usually find that frequency response is nowhere near flat.

I've been trying to find software for my computer that can do all of the heavy lifting before converting the audio to analog, however there are numerous drawbacks to running software-based electronic crossovers, etc. It seems that the easiest thing to do is to stick with classic analogue crossovers, equalizers, etc.

My question is... how many components could I purchase before they start to harm audio quality and introduce noise into the system? I was thinking about purchasing a dbx balanced crossover and equalizer. Are there better options out there? Should I try to make it work on my computer (now matter how inconvenient it is)? Also, should I consider component digital crossovers and equalizers?

Thanks!