I need some advice on routing and audio interfaces...

It‘s that time again.

I‘ve been in audio nearing 15 years now and I have a modest prosumer studio at home. I never bothered to really upgrade my routing situation however, and I am frankly a bit lost on what is the right way forward. I will sketch my situation as brief as I can while including all the relevant details.

I own a Focusrite 8i18 for live and studio, and I purchased a 2016 Antelope orion studio interface second hand. Spoiler alert: it doesn‘t work, because the software is too old and not compatible with Windows 11 from my laptop, even run in compatibility mode... Therefore I can only use it for its direct ins and monitoring.:facepalm:

Neither interface is now helping me with what I need a solution for. What I want is a patch bay or some solution with high quality conversion that allows me to pick and choose from my hardware compressors and EQs and whatnot so I don‘t have to rewire everything all the time and record in/out through the headphone output of my Focusrite like a total noob. Ideally, I want a solution so that I can digitally pick which unit is connected and in which order. As far as I understand only Antelope Audio has this on their Galaxy, and maybe it‘s too fancy. I‘ll settle for a classic patch bay where I‘d have to just rewire by hand, as long as it‘s in reach and easy.. As far as I understand another option would be to have each connected as an insert(?) so I can for instance just use an Ableton external instrument rack and plug it in there so I can move the order of the hardware inside Ableton. The only question then is how can I get this with low/no latency?

Everyone tells me f*ck all this and just buy an RME. So I‘ve now watched a lot of videos on RME (with TotalMix) and Antelope (with Control Room), but I just cant figure out what is right for me. I also dont know how I‘d judge the quality of the preams of these units and their playback. The Antelopes are obviously amazing sounding but notorious for their connection. RME amazing connection but I just don‘t know how they compare.

Finally to make matters worse, my happy new Windows 11 machine has Thunderbolt 4 which apparently isn‘t backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1/2 (which my 2016 interface has, so I have to run it with USB.....)

please. I need help. How can I best route my studio?