Any Advice for home studio? Options

[MoxieMike]

Hey. I have been lofting about it your forums and you guys all rock.

I am thinking about doing a home studio for my band and was wondering what you suggest. There would be guitar and vocals, some (limited) live percussion, keyboards and drum machine (midi) and some oddball instruments like cello, flute, etc etc.

I am thinking of going iMac G4 and getting some sort of USB interface (the $179 edirol looks good) and a behringer 16 channel board. (like, $250)

I would be using cubase 5.1, reason, b3 and absynth. And a slew of guitars.

Am i on the right track?

Thanks for your help.
m

[Synthetic]

well.... imac will work ok but I might suggest looking at another audio interface for it though. If you don't want to spend a lot but still want good quality and flexibilty... I would look into something like Digidesign Mbox or M-Audio interface rather than anything from Edirol. I am not real keen on Edirol stuff... I had looked into getting a USB audio interface from them a few years ago. First... they are a 'PC first and Mac later' company that has dismal mac support. Second... I compare their products to Radio Shack which makes some ok stuff but sometimes not near as good compared to other products with more features for about the same price.

Sounds like you are on the right track though. Check out www.musiciansfriend.com or www.sweetwater.com and look up their audio interfaces and then compare the prices and features to the Edirol unit you are looking at.... also... you might want to make sure you get one that has midi inputs and outputs as well to use with drum machine and keyboards.