So instead of the soundcard approach, I got a firewire mixer
Understandable from a budget viewpoint. It's a great way to get up and running quickly and cheaply. The downside is that everything always goes through the mixer twice (recording and playback) and you can never bypass the mixer stage. So if you get a good mic pre, you still have to patch it through the mixer. Also when it's upgrade time (depressingly regular with studio gear), you have to upgrade to a mixer and soundcard at the same time anyway.
As far as my current shopping list is concerned... hehe, its scary.
They all are once you start recording. I'm also on the lookout for an electronic kit, but I haven't drummed for about 10 years (preferably Roland), so it's low priority. I'm using loops and single samples to piece together tracks at the moment. There's a decently priced Alesis kit I want to check out sometime too.
I'm at the "upgrading from decent to good gear" stage, particularly mics and mic pres, but it's going slow as most of the items on my list are R10K+ (and I keep on buying guitar stuff and software!). I have to skip the Neumann U47 and U87 for now and stay with Rode.
What setup are you working with?
http://ratcliffe.co.za/gear - easier to point you there, rather than list everything here.
I've been pruning out the software with a heavy hand lately (as I did with guitars recently), so the list of software is the stuff I
actually use. I was getting to the point where I would spend hours choosing between 15 different compressors for a particular track and not really getting any work done. So especially with softsynths and plugins, I've pared down by more than 50%.
