Audio interface or Mixer with built-in audio interface?

Question

Currently I have no equipment, but i plan on building up a very basic home studio and home DJing setup. The first thing i want to buy is a set of self powered studio monitors (KRK Rokit RP5's).

I was told I need an audio interface between the computer and the monitors for decent sound quality.

After looking into DJ decks and DJ mixers I have noticed that some of the mixers have a built-in audio interface.

Would it be wise to save money by hitting 2 birds with one stone and just get one of these mixers (have my eye on the Allen & Heath Xone:23C mixer)?

This way i could get my monitors working with good quality for now and in the future when I build my dj setup I will already have the dj mixer, thus saving me money in the long run!

Would I be compromising on the sound quality if I played music like this:

PC -> mixer (with audio interface) -> studio monitors

instead of this:

PC -> audio interface -> mixer -> studio monitors

or this:

PC -> audio interface -> studio monitors

Answer 1

The biggest problem with combining your mixer and interface is that most of the cheaper options have sub-par pre-amps, which would definitely affect your quality. I would personally recommend investing in a quality audio interface (a great option would be focusrite) with solid pre-amps, and then later you could invest in a cheaper mixer.

Answer 2

If you only want it for DJ'ing then the NI audio 2 DJ is perfect, it's cheap and it sounds good. Then you can have a seperate mixer. In my experience it's better to get individual parts for each job as the units that do more than one thing tend to do a half arsed job of it all.