The MBOX is a soundcard
As you are probably well aware the Mbox is a soundcard with 2 xlr balanced inputs (double as trs and quarter inch unbalanced for guitar, bass etc..) and 2 balanced trs outputs. It comes with Pro Tools 6.x and a bunch of extra light edition programs including smapletank, amplitube, live and reason. If you can get the MBOX factory bundle that includes these extra RTAS plugins :
-
moogerfooger Analog Delay by Bomb Factory
- JOEMEEK SC2 Compressor by Bomb Factory
-
JOEMEEK VC5 Meequalizer by Bomb Factory
-
Cosmonaut Voice by Bomb Factory
- Maxim by Digidesign
and should only cost you an extra $40 - $50.
The Mbox also has two insert points for routing the input signal to external gear (e.g routing a vocal recording through a valve compressor before it hits the hard disc for recording). The only thing missing is a midi interface.
Those can be picked up as a usb version. Edirol do one called
the UM-1SX and should only cost you about $70.
All in all the MBOX package is a great starter setup. Great quality card bundled with the industry standard for audio recording 'Pro Tools'.
Go for it, you won't look back!!