I'll pitch in on a couple of items. First, I have a Digi002 Rack. I think the build quality is quite solid, but I tend to take pretty good care of my equipment, and the Digi stays in the studio. (I use an Alesis HD24 for remote recording.) The biggest factor in my going with a PT system was the support. There are more books and online classes geared toward PT than any of the the competitors. I found it a very fast climb up the learning curve because of that. I'm in the sticks, and I think it would have been hard to get as much help with another system. The drawbacks of going with PT are very real, and you should search and try to weigh all the factors in your situation.

Take what anyone says about the sound quality of any system with a grain of salt. Any $6K system will reveal flaws that will annoy people who work with $100k systems. The things that annoy them will not necessarily annoy you, and will almost certainly not be the thing that will limit whether you can make good recordings on your system. (The good engineers who work with the $100k systems will be able to make recordings you or I will envy on any $6k system.) In general, I think its a mistake to get too hung up on sound quality. In the end, the engineer is the biggest determinant of sound quality. Look for equipment that's easiest for you to get the most out of.

For specific recommendations, I'd start with (1) a good mixer and (2) a good desktop computer and build around that. The mixer gives you a bunch of decent preamps and is easy to set up and use. It is also a generally useful tool for live sound and will have better resale value than a lot of recording equipment. The desktop computer will have fewer constraints than the laptop and be much easier to expand. Unless you are doing remotes several times a week, you can carry a desktop unit pretty easily.

Your choice of DAW and interface is really more personal. You know how I made my decision. Yours will be based on much different factors like your computing knowledge, the amount of time you have to dedicate to this, and the type of support you can get locally.

Everbody has there opion.............and this is mind. If I had a six thousand dollar budget to put a system together , needing enough channels to record drums. This would be it.............

You can build a badass PC for around 1800.00 with the price's as low as they are right now.

Get a RME Fireface...........1500.00

A good choice for Software.......SonarPE.....500.00

That's around 3800.00..........I still got 2200.00 to spend.

1- MD421's..........350.00
2-57's.................180.00
2-SM 81'S...........700.00
1 Beta58.............160.00

That is another 1390.00 dollar's........I still got 810.00

810.00 dollar.............Start looking for a deal on some used boom stands
and get 8 decent mic cables ......................................................

Damn I needed more MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peace...............Scoobie

P.S. You could make some killer recordings with the list above!

If I had to do alot of multi-track out-of-studio stuff, as well as in, I'd carefully consider the "all-in-one" boxes? Yamaha, Tascam, whatever, no computer neccessary, some can do a "pro" job with lots of tracks. 3 to 4 on that, the rest on the mics/cables/phones(And a nice, rugged, case/s to keep everything in!) and I'd be set.

I'd still want a good computer and software at home, but I bet you'd have that anyway, no matter what you do to record. Even a very good laptop would be MY last choice - just not flexible enough for me and w-a-y too costly for the sake of portability.

Get your tracks down "in the box" then play with them in the computer, with whatever software you desire, later. With those boxes you can even burn a "rough" CD to leave with the drummer/band as a souvenier! Actually, with most of these gadgets, you can just keep sittin' there and do a pretty fine mix, burn the CD and you're DONE(Where needed.)!

TG

BTW: Let's leave the phrase "great sound quality" for our next upgrade budget... say... 6 HUNDRED thousand or MUCH MORE? For 6 G's, let's settle for "Hey, that's nice!"