Need Help with DAW!

[Ghazi]

I'm making this post because I basically need some guidance. Before I list the equipment I'm working with let me tell you what my goal is. My goal is to set up a professional DAW that can be used for Hip-Hop production work. As far as software goes, I'll be using Nuendo or something like it. I need to work on making instrumentals only (via MIDI), not recording vocals with the setup for now.

Now, here are the specs of my comp...

P4 3GHz
Abit IC7
512MB RAM
Raptor SATA 36GB HD
Seagate SATA 130 GB HD
Radeon 9500 (modded to 9800)
CD Burner
DVD Burner
Current sound card is a SB Audigy but I'll cover replacing it in a minute...

That is my current setup. Now, what do I do? Should I get something like the Audiophile 2496 for it, or should I try to go with something like a MOTU 2408 core system with the PCI-324 card? Since I'm turning the machine into a DAW, will I need some new kind of motherboard that is the best for audio, or what? Am I gonna need a multi-track mixer? I know the motherboard I have now is great, but have never looked into audio production specific boards.

The following are things I'll need to be able to work with via the DAW...
MPC2000XL
Turntable w/ Mixer
Some type of MIDI keyboard controller (possibly the Radium)
Eventually, rack sound modules such as the Mo Phatt and others.

Thanks a lot for all of the help. As you can see, I'm a newb but you gotta start somewhere.

- Ghazi

 

[Fusion2]

the Audiophile 2496 is a start, along with samples, patch bay, midi cable, the 24/96 has a softmixer with it, you can go with hardware or software on your effects, soft is the poor mans fx hardware is studio equip, i read that here so don't cotton pony over it, it may be BS for all i know, epox, asus, msi make good mainboards, shorten your questions list down and try again, to many takes to much time and thought to complete in one setting...

peace...