It's well known that the Aurora is an excellent converter but it is getting long in the tooth. Seems like newer offerings from RME, Antelope, UA ect. have crowded the field. Have the newer interfaces raised the bar? It will be used for drums so I will need 8 to 12 inputs.

I am intrigued By the Antelope Orion or Zen Studio. My PC is firewire/usb2 so thunderbolt is not an option at this point. The Zen would do what I need but the pres are my concern. What I like about the Lynx is you add your own quality pres and can connect any way you want with the added L slot card. That way I am covered when I eventually do replace my pc.

My goal for ad/da without pres is around 2k so the Orion is a bit out of reach but there seems to be plenty of Lynx available used. If the Aurora still competes that would be my choice.

In general, geat does not get worse when new gear comes out ..! The Lynx Aurora is a really good converter, moste of the current avaiable are btw.
I would recommend that you try them directly and A/B them to know what they can do and what not.

I shot out the Orion and Lynx Aurora at Vintageking. They are so close sonically, it comes down to your own preference. You can pickup a pair of Lynx Aurora 8 for a total of 16 channels for around $2k (cheaper than most of the Aurora 16 units around $2300) or spend another $1000 and have the Orion with 32 channels. The sound is 99% the same and 1% different. We used orchestra music for the shootout to get a range of tones for comparison. The Lynx had a very little more edge in the 2-5k where the Orion was slightly more even. The bottom end was tighter with the Lynx.

To my ears, the silverface Apollo has a less defined image, less depth and width than either the Orion or Lynx. I have not heard the blackface Apollo so can't speak to that.

There's also the Motu 16A. There you have thunderbolt, usb, and avb connectivity all in one package. Might be worth a look too.