Please Someone Help A Beginner!!!, What to buy Options

[Hamish]

I have just ordered a G4 dual processor, and am now trying to piece together the rest of my setup. I have come to the stage of choosing a souncard and midi interface. Interface wise I'm gonna go for the emagic MT4 is this wise? But I am stuck for a soundcard, I've been looking at the M-Audio range, but really don't have any idea, can someone give me a hint, bearing in mind I want to spend around £200 - £250.

[rickenbacker]

This is a topic that comes up a lot, so have a scout around these forums and you're bound to turn up some gold dust.

For your money, there are quite a few products available. M-Audio are OK, although there have been a few disgruntled users here in recent months. Edirol make some good stuff, Emagic have their own audio interfaces, plus there are many more.

A good way of checking out what's out there is to get hold of a mail order catalogue (say, Jigsaw if you're in the UK) or go through a mag like Sound on Sound, price everything up and then either search the web for user's reports or come back here and ask about/search for specific products. There's bound to be someone who's using what you're considering buying.

Happy hunting!