Before you take out a loan on equipment, you may want to read this thread:

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No sense going over all of it again here, but just be sure you know exactly what you are getting into. Go to that loan calculator, and see what happens. "Loan", "music equipment", and "investment" are pretty much incompatible terms in the same sentence unless you have an established business, or KNOW you will bring in income and be able to take tax breaks for all that stuff.

Tread carefully. Hate to see someone get themselves into a heartbreaking situation.

Just some friendly advice. :wink:

Kapt.Krunch

its a school investment, i need it to do well in school
business is secondary. and honestly, what type of business will i be getting with a set up that has no mixer or monitors.

i can pay off an extra 5 grand of school debt, especially if having my own gear will result in better grades and a better understanding of every thing that typical class can't give me.

OK. I'm sure folks here would agree we would be remiss to not point that out. If you know what you are getting into, go for it.

Nothing wrong with your choices, but your stated intention to monitor exclusively through headphones will probably preclude any serious mixing. Maybe you don't need to do that there, because you can do it at school? That's fine, as long as you have access. You have to be careful about applying effects and doing drastic changes through headphones only. Headphones are great for spotting anomalies and stereo-field placement, but unless you really, really learn them, they may not translate well to other playback.

Have you budgeted cables and accessories? Stands?

A backup source? You don't mention why Logic, and what you are doing? Is this strictly music, or are you doing video? Voiceovers, perhaps? Extra instrumentation synced to video? Perhaps a second hard drive? (250GB is large, but will fill up quickly with very many multi-track/video files). Be handy to bring it from school and back on a well-protected portable drive, rather than CD/DVD, etc. I guess if they are not too large, you could always use a jump drive. Should perhaps budget for permanent backup, whether it's yet another large drive, or a stack of DVDs....or both, for the most safety and convenience.

If doing voiceover stuff, do you have a space prepared? A small acoutically-treated space, perhaps? Keep outside noise out, and record only what you want, well? Is that at all important to you? I dunno. If so, may consider throwing that in the budget.

Probably more, but that's all I could think of at the moment. With the info you supplied, these are only guesses at what you MIGHT want to consider. As anyone here will likely attest to, once you start with something like this, there seems to ALWAYS be "just one more thing I need to do this properly". :wink:

I'm sure others will disseminate all this and jump in, especially if you respond to what I mentioned that may, or may not, be important.

Good luck in school and beyond,

Kapt.Krunch

I know all to well the problems with mixing on headphones. but i do have my schools studios to mix. the whole idea behind the set up is that i can do all my grunt work at home, and not be in a lab from when class ends to when it begins again like i was so many sleepless night from last year.

Logic is the main MIDI program for my program, and well lets face it, its stock plug ins are jaw dropping. Also protools is a must. Other then recording and editing in protools i am not a huge fan of it, so i am just getting the mbox so i can edit, record and do all the grunt work. my studio at school is a full blown protools HD 7.2 set up, so i don't really have a choice in the matter. I am sure the more i learn how to set up a mix in protools the better i will like it. but until then, logic is my go to tool.

as far as hard drives and such go, i am getting a 500 gig for home use and a 250 for school.

and the main recording i am going to do is vocals (mainly speech) and some acoustic guitar. just for shit and giggles. i don't have much of a recording space, but i have friends with some nice setups that i can always use when needed. (the best part about going to a music industry program is all your friend have cool toys to).

and finally, yes i took into account cables and stands and the like.

thanks allot for the heads up.

i can't express how pumped i am to get my new gear, and computer. just to have the capability to turn my creative thoughts into something real with out needing to take a half hour bus ride to school and hope that a computer is open.