Need Help With Recording Purchases, Need knowledge from expirienced people Options

[albino_axe]

Ok, this is my first post and first time looking into buying recording gear, so obviously I do not have any experience and need some guidance. I play guitar, harmonica, and sing(I also would like to do some djembe percussion in my songs as well). I want to be able to record songs with good quality, not like studio stuff, but acceptable to put on CD as a home recorded album. I have a G4 1GHz Tibook and I bought Amadeus II which is a simple two track recording program and have been using the onboard mic in my laptop, which, frankly, really stinks. Now, I have an incredibly tight budget, and I don't know if I can really even get into recording with so tight of finances. So far I have been looking at just being creative with Amadeus so I don't have to buy a more expensive recording program. I know about the whole iMic thing, but that is lower quality then I would like. I want to be able to input more than one mic at once along with guitar etc. Here is how much knowledge I have about recording...I believe that all I need to start recording on my Tibook is some mixing software, a mixer, and mics(with instruments of course), output to the line-in on the back of my laptop. Am I way off? I was looking at a Behringer Eurorack UB1204-PRO mixer and two AKG D 8000 S mics along with my dinky Amadeus II program. Would this work? Please let me know. This has been driving me up the walls for the past week since I could find no one to talk to about setting up a home studio with an Apple laptop. And as I said about my budget, the mixer and mics I was looking at amount to only $200. That should tell you my money situation. Thank you!

[kwilinski]

I am also new to this recording process but I have learned some lessons over the past year... I would recommend building up to the following--

Mbox with Pro Tools LE-- look for used on eBay (maybe $300 used)
Reason 2.5 Full Version-- the Reason Adapted version that came with my Mbox is way to limited to be useful ($350)

Other stuff is useful but these two are required in my opinion. I also have an Oxygen 8 Midi Controller Keyboard. ($120)

I would save up the $800 you need to do it right and not waste your money. I paid for mine by selling stuff I don't use on eBay. Good luck and have fun!