While messing around with some vocals I noticed that you also have big drum phase issues but here's my first scratch vocal track.
http://soundcloud.com/pahtcub/diablo/s-Spysl
Guitars yes almost always then pan em wide, vocals sometimes but normally I use harmonies to fill out vocals but yes I can sound a little distracting when used the entire song on vocals.
Maybe having each guitarist embelish a higher part then eq it to only allow airy sparkle through then blend that lightly into the mix for a bit more dimension.
I don't hear what you're looking for that's a pretty big guitar sound from my ears, any bigger and you're gonna have trouble fitting other elements into the mix.
I guess school didn't pay off I didn't know that spdif could be use in a to slink manner as well, I guess I always just assumed that ADAT 8ch was the only thing that lightpipe was used for, thanks for the enlightenment. But am I correct in assuming that in real world applications that spdif is...
In that price range you are better off mixing and then A-Bing on different playback sources is what they're saying. I hate to sound like a broken record but when mixing, the environment you mix in actually makes a bigger impact on how well your mixes translate then the quality of monitors...
You don't need 15s for monitors just make sure it's well powered 12s work just fine but don't go below. You aren't putting bass through foldback or guitars at that level.
Both of them lack low end, the 2nd one especially, it's squashed beyond comprehension. The first one sounds good but when the drums come in it's missing the low end I belive the hiss and snare is taking up too much room in your mix.
Keep in mind that you will also have a bass guitar (hopefully) in a song that will fill the low end, I fell into the trap of trying to make my guitar pull double duty when I first started as well, not sure if that's what you're referring too, but definitely didn't have too much bass in this clip.
A little compression, reverb and Eq boost around 200 and a high shelf for "air" but honestly it didn't need a lot here's what I came up with...
http://soundcloud.com/pahtcub/dubblahblah/s-po5ai
Oh also some widening but only because it was a single track, in a mix it wouldn't need it.
I'd look towards your monitoring situation, that sounds fine to me, but if I had to nit pick anything it would be anything EXCEPT "the bass sounds too heavy" it's also far from tinny
It's also built into cubase, edit the waveform of say the kick drum then chose hit point editor and change the threshold/sensativity until the hit points are only picking up hits, then click create midi notes from hit points, select the note you want that track to output and DONE, no plug in...