Home Studio

[achyeboah]

Hello guys...I'm looking for a little help acquiring gear for a home studio. I hope this post is in the correct forum.

I have a Roland Fantom X8 I'm gonna stick with. I just got it in January this year, and I know I have in no way exhausted its possibilities.

For the rest of the gear, I wanna keep my cost below £1000.

What I wanna get is a mixer/firewire approach so I can record live vocals + band. I've been looking at the Mackie Onyx 1620 + firewire option (goes for about £800 on absolute music), cubase 4 on my Dell Inspiron 9400 + a PCI express card for the firewire 800. How do you guys find this setup???

I'd be happy if you could recommend linux compatible software/hardware...as I have a dual boot system, but prefer to work in linux.

Also which monitors would you recommend? I currently have the Sony MDR-V700 headphones.

I have been thinking about a nice mic too, any recommendations? this would be for the lead vocals, I have some old shures I can use for the backing, for live recordings.

I hope thats clear enough.

Cheers, mates

Samuel