What Software/hardware To Buy, iMac based home demo recording system Options

[Stevie]

I am singer/songwriter looking for a simple, good quality, inexpensive (in that order) home demo recording system.
 
I would like to use my one year old iMac 17 to record demos to:
 
1)  Put on my website.
 
2)  Send to booking agents.
 
3)  Eventually, use as guides for making commercial quality studio recordings.
 
Requirements:
 
1)  It must record guitar and vocals. 
 
2)  The system must have reasonable quality echo, delay, eq and other effects
 
3)  If possible, I would like to use drum samples from the recording/sequencing program, but if that turns into a problem, I can use my drum machine on two of the tracks. 
 
4)  If possible, I would like to use my guitar as a bass, in other words, record a single note guitar track then cut the frequency in half. 
 
5)  If the system comes with piano, synthesizer, horn or other samples, so much the better.
 
What do you recommend?
 
If I wanted to do commercial quality, what would the price/ease-of-use penalty be?
 
Steve

[boze]

as far as hardware, you can start out with just geting a soundcard. these days, the name 'soundcard' can be misldeading as the hw you'll be looking for will not have a 'card' per se (since an iMac has no pci slots).

depending on what people think of the osx drivers you might be a really good candidate for the M-Audio Firewire410. I don't there are any other fw soundcards at the $400 and under pricepoint. you'll get two xlr connections with supposedly decent mic pre's and you can just go straight in from whatever mics you own.

for half that money you can get a usb soundcard, there a whole mess of them available but while i don't have any firsthand experience i've always thought usb1 was not the sort of bus to handle audio as opposed to mice or kbds or printers. again, i'd look for one with xlr inputs and ask around to see what the drivers for osx are like before you make your final decision.

you will be really pleased with the results of a soundcard/logic bigbox combination i think. nothing like 'commercial quality' really, because studios have tons of gear and years of experience and those two things can't be approximated for the kind of money i'm talking about. one thing to consider is rending a real quality pre or voice chain when you want to record vocals for your finished tracks. i haven't done this yet, but i think renting a >$2k piece of kit for a few bucks is a nice way to give yourself an advantage in terms of quality. don't know if you can rent fancy mics, but that would be another option.

lastly, i wouldn't recommend that guitar-as-bass idea unless you're going for an unusual effect. used guitar stores will have a playable bass you can own for <$200 and i think that's a worthwhile investment. the city paper where i live has them for less than that. i have an old ibanez i got for a hundred dollars.

good luck!