I have a Kurzweil K2500x, a Mackie 1202 Mixer, Yamaha Power Amp and Alesis Monitor 2's. Now I need a computer for audio recording. 95% of the time everything will be done on the Kurzweil. In the future I might want to add a vocal, or guitar, or flute. My stuff is (for lack of a better term) New Age. Yanni, George Winston type stuff. Almost all instrumental. I can afford a G5 or a G4 1.25 dual and whatever interfaces or software I need (except full blown pro tools). I don't want to "over-buy". My computer will only be used for music. I want software that is not going to take me forever to figure out how to use. I have been looking at midi interfaces, soundcards, etc. trying to make sense out of all of it. I am electronically illiterate. I would sure appreciate what people would recommend. Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer my question.

Kyle

One suggestion.
Get a G5 (if you can afford it) and then Motus 828 Mk-II firewire interface.
( this is a terrific audio inteface with mic preamps - no latency cue-mixing - up to four discrete stereo mixes - and the box can act as a standalone mixer as well )

The 828 Mk-II comes with "Audiodesk 2" an audio recording software and a quite powerful recording environment. This setup will NOT do any midi though.

If you want to do midi and want various sync possibilities add an a "Motu MTP AV-Usb".
You can always get a cheaper midi-interface if you dont need all routing and sync pssibilities in the MTP AV.

You can upgrade from Audiodesk to DP4 ( I did ) "Digital Performer" will do both midi and audio in the same app. ( check out the gear at http://www.motu.com/ )

Cheers: Dixiechicken

i think the MoTU 828mkII may qualify as "over buying" for some one who is doing 95% of their music on a K2500. you could get a m-audio delta 44 for less than half the price and spend the remaining $500.00 on a decent mic. even a strereo card (m-audio 24/96, echo mia, pro tools m-box) would be fine if all your doing is vocals and instrumental overdubs.

if the kurzweil is your only synth any cheap (edirol um-1s, m-audio uno, both under $50.00) midi interface will work just fine, but the Motu micro lite 5in 5out would be a nice upgrade at $149.00.

software is too much a matter of personal preference for me to recomend much. cubase seems to be a little less stable than logic or DP. DP might be a little easier to learn than logic. metro is pretty easy to use and cheap, defininately worth trying out.

buy the g5. its over buying, but its too cool not to get.

Question regarding the Motu 828 mk-II. That interface does have a MIDI in and out port so while the audio desk software doesn't have any midi capabilities if I was running say Logic I could use that to get the midi into Logic. Now, if I have a single keyboard controller and use software synths, this interface will be enough for my needs right? I haven't done much with midi and it's pretty confusing to me, but say I'll only have one external midi device - am I right in thinking that I'll be able to route that device to at most 16 different internal software synths (one on each channel)?
If I only have one piece of midi hardware, a separate midi interface wouldn't be necessary - right?
Thank you...
this site and the people who frequent it have been more than helpful to me ...
thanks