Hi Chris
I think the Waves bundle is the way to go. It should give you pretty much everything you need.
Apart from that, the Bomb Factory plugs are pretty good, and maybe Antares Auto-tune. You can get full functioning - time limited demos for all of these if you want to try them first.
You will find that the 3rd party plugs will hog your CPU alot more than the Digi ones. For that reason I always try to use the stock standard plugs when I can get away with it, and only go to the others when I really can't get away with it.
Mark

Hi Chris:
Check out too the "INA GRM Tools". Although they are not traditional plugins they can achieve some really weird effects on your sounds. You can download a demo from digidesign.com (Products > home studio > plugins finder).

Cheers
Jaime.

Before you sink over $2500 into the Mac and Digi001, I suggest that you check out other options. You will outgrow 001 very quickly, and have very few options for upgrading.
You can get a PC that will blow away that Mac for under $1000, and have over $1500 left to buy recording gear that will be expandable. It's far wiser to plan ahead than to have to sell your gear in the future for pennies on the dollar in order to expand.
Just $.02 thrown in from a guy who's been there...

...Just to counter that approach...
Unless you go for the top-end Mac, I do not think you'll see significant REAL-WORLD savings on a cheaper PC-- I am talking beyond the specs here, because I've found a lot that gear is cheap but the performance is not so predictable. But then again, I'm a Mac guy, so let's skip that debate.

It's true the 001 lacks some proprietary hardware expansion options that some of the other stuff may have, but it is great piece of gear and still offers some (Alesis AI-4 for more analog ins). Of courseplug-insare a great route, and you can't max out like with hardware.

However, I might actually suggest NOT planning too far ahead and trying to anticipate too much that you are not sure of, because things change so fast that it tends to be a major gamble. By all means, plan for what you KNOW will be inevitable, but don't project too far out and let that color what you may get today. This has happened to me many times, and I've ended up with some things that I thought were major concerns at the time that turn out to be non-issues 6 months later. Unless you think you will be expanding very quickly, look for the near-future (maybe with a few options) rather than too far ahead.

Again, just offering the other side. If you have some specifics perhaps we can confuse you some more!

Let me second Brian's comment.

Another option to consider is a Toolbox setup for well under $500 combined with Lucid converters. This will sound better than most things on the market at ANY price. Toolbox and 001 won't save an ill-conceived arrangement as well as some of the other choices but I think BOTH are highly under-rated in terms of audio quality and reliability assuming that you combine them with premium converters and the WAVES bundles.

Hi chris, before you buy the digi 001 just make sure you understand this:

1. 8 channels adat i/o. I have found that I need more than 8 channels for my unique needs. That is hooking up a korg oasys, a second computer dedicated to soft synths like reaktor and gigasampler and hooking up an efxprocessor. Will you ever be in a situation like this? To have 24 channels adat can make your life easier, well at least my life.

2. Mac vs. PC. A power survey was taken in a scientific manner on the duc. The dependant variable being a set sequence of plug ins, the independant variable computer configurations. So, we were able to find wich configurations mac and pc gave the best performance being able to record x number tracks maxed with specific plug ins. the 733 generally got 20- 21 tracks. The some 1.4 ghz athlon configurations were getting 24 tracks+10 auxillory tracks.
It was found that PC's costing as low as $700 were outperforming the g4/733.Waves and bombfactory support both mac and PC. Waves supports vst as well mac and pc.

3. "Powered Plug ins": For reasons we can all understand, even if were not sympathetic to, pro tools le does not and likely will not support the uad-1. While with an athlon cpu this almost isnt necessary, if your also using the host cpu to do synthesis then maybe the UAD-1's realverb pro and superior la-2a and 1176 models will releive it in sublime fashion. Also, soft synths are much better integrated into apps like Nuendo, Cubase, and Logic.

4. Asio 2. There are no asio 2 drivers for the 001.

Okay, kind of a long post, are you still with me? If so, and you dont need any of that then yes the digi 001 is for you!
With your digi 001 the waves gold bundle is superb, Ive also enjoyed the McDsp and Bombfactory plug ins.
A very interesting plug in as well is Serrato's pitch and time. These are all expensive plug ins. If you want cheap plug ins avoid pro tools.

Just remember...Waves Native is only supported on the Mac and not the PC and is only RTAS....just a friendly reminder!!!
Peace
Opus

Hey man,
that was true in the recent past, but with version 3.2 there is PC rtas and vst support. An exciting development indeed!

Peace:-)

Cool....I was wondering when they were going to get their heads out of their ass and makeit compatible!! lol
VST is still beta tho...I havent tried it yet..I'm tired of putting things in my system to screw things up any worse than it needs to be!!!
Peace and thanks for the update as the Digi site needs some serious updating!!
Opus

Hello guys. I wonder why anyone mentioned the best plugins around? McDsp... all the EQs, compressors, filters... sound better than digirack (at least to me and a couple hundred more people :) ) and is less CPU hungry. Yes, this is true, if you can, test it yourself!
And by the way, I worked with PCs for more than 10 years, now I'm 100% Mac... but, if you plan to use PT, than get a PC, build it with the best parts you can buy, it'll still be cheaper than the top end Mac, but, I'll say to you, to keep this machine optimized for AUDIO ONLY. Don't use it for internet and downloaded crap... keep it clean :) so you can probably have a machine almost as solid as a Mac :)