Recomendations On Purchases For Sound Engineering Options

[liquidh2o]

I've been spending the last couple months holding out on buying a mac with the rumors of the new g4's, so as soon as they were announced i purchased the dual 1ghz model(and went 3rd party w/ a 1.5gb ram kit).

My main reason for buying this mac is to start learning sound engineering. In short, i'm looking to make/edit music. As far as instruments go, the only one involved would be a keyboard(i'm taking piano lessons). I'm looking to get into more of the Nine Inch Nails, fatboy slim type of music, but i'm unsure as to what software/hardware i should buy to get started out. Also any literature on making this type of music would be helpful.

So this leads me to here, and hopefully some of you can help me out. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

[OptikSynth]

Noooo don't fall into that trap... seriously, start with the esentials. last year i got a g4 laptop, usb quattro (input device), reason 1.0, digital performer 3.0, peak, and a couple other things like mic's and a cheap mixer. BIG mistake. i'd start with a G4, Pro Tools free, a cheap 4-input card, and maybe a sample cd (or even for that, get a couple issues of "computer music" (www.computermusic.co.uk). then you've got a foundation to build on, or if later you find out you want to go a certian direction, you havn't wasted money so you can "start over" if you need to.

i found out with my gear, i could have got a native instraments synth and battery instead of reason, and got digital performer's midi-free version (audio desk or whatever it's called) instead of DP3 and had money left over. but it's hard to pick what you want when you havn't used something else

oh and one more thing... if you wanna go the NIN route, get a MINIDISC player that records. a sampler's best friend