Need Good Equipment Rec Urgently!, need help with high end recommendations Options

[juicefriend]

Hello MacMusic!!!!

I'm in a band who is being asked by their indie label to rerecord and make some new tracks for an album--we've been using reaktor and reason and logic and whatnot--the label recommended a recording guru who recommended the following products:

-----clipped from his email------

Really Nice Mic Preamp (STEREO)--
http://www.mercenary.com/fmrrnmp.html -- this is the best
price/performance pre I've heard.
Sytek--might get a 4 channel on ebay for 750$.
API 200 or 500 series, TUBE TECH MP-1A, NEVE, Great River...These are
higher end and more expensive.

A to D converter possibilities:
Lucid AD96/24 (never used this, I've heard good things)
Apogee Rosetta AD/DA (not heard, pretty standard but you get the DA as
well for monitoring)
Mytek AD or DA(these are around 1000$ for a stereo unit, really good)
Lavry AD or DA
------------------------------------------

The problem is, said guru is now in the middle of a recording session and hasn't responded to our follow-up emails... and we have even more basic questions like, what mic should we get? should we use a mac laptop? can that even work with these a/d things and whatnot... etc....

Can anyone please please shed some light? we definitely need to use better recording equipment... and we'd like to switch over to protools but really have no clue where to start... any advise would be great!!!!

thanks!!!

JF