With digidesign, you´ll need a pair of monitors, active, something like the Alesis M1, they´re good value for the price sound good too. Cables: two balanced jacks, or two XLR to balanced jack. Firewire to the computer, comes with digidesign, headphones, AKG makes them good. And offcourse you´ll need a computer, and here is where you need to spend some bucks. The digi system won´t be outdated anytime soon, the 002 v. is, with updates, just as good as 003, but I doubt you´ll be able to get a new 002. The digidesign demands alot of the computer, a macbook pro would suffice, but not much less.
It depends very much, what kind of recording you are going to do, so, for the sake of argument, let´s say you´ll record a five peace, drums, guitar*2, bass and vocals. For the drums you need 7 or 8 mics, and you can purchase some drum mic packs, Shure is reliable, there are others. Now you got the mics, you´ll need the inputs, as the digidesign only has 4 mic inputs, you can get some preamps, Motu or Focusrite, check the marked out. For the bass, you need, either a basspreamp, so you´ll record line, wich is what I would recommend, since the ProTools has a bundle of plugins where you can record bass direct, here you´d need only an unbalanced jack cable. You could do the same for the guitar, and maybe get a multi fx proccessor. Now the vocals, here you´ll need a nother mic, preferrebly a condencer mic, since this are more sensitive to delicate vocals. The digi has phantom power pr. mic in. There are lot´s of stuff, and digidesign is not the only way to go, the are standalone harddisk recorders, that are exremely reliable, like the Akai DPS24MkII and the
Roland VS2480(if it is still in production), Yamaha makes some good ones. So I recommend that you analyze your needs and style, and base your purchase on that.
So, good luck hunting
Tórstein
