Help me upgrade my DAW?

[OranJuice]

Hey guys, i'm looking to upgrade my DAW set-up.

Things i'm particularly interested in, are upgrading the Interface, Mics, and getting a preamp and good monitors.

 

Here's my current set-up.

 

White Macbook, with 2 GB ram

Toneport Ux1

PPA external firewire hard drive

SM57

MXL 57M

Sennheiser HD280s

 

This set-up actually does a pretty decent job, but i'm looking for something more.

 

Couple problems I want to work on, equipment for recording vocals, and getting a good set of monitors so I won't have to listen to my stuff through 5 different things and remix each time in order to get a good mix.

 

I'm thinking of upgrading the interface to a Apogee Duet, and getting a set of Yamaha HS50s for monitors.

 

Reason i'm getting the Yamahas, is that I want something that would translate my mix well onto other systems.

 

I'm also looking into getting a nice mic for vocals.

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if any of you might have any idea what mic may have been used to record vocals for this song by Larc en Ciel.

 

Or if you know a nice mic and preamp combination that would get me in the same ballpark.

 

[YOUTUBE]ys0fZl3gGv8[/YOUTUBE]

 

 

Also, I heard the Apogee Duet has nice preamps.

 

Would I need to get a seperate preamp? I also have plug-in preamps as well so....

 

Oh, and i'd like to keep the price of each item to under $500 each, but I can pay more if needed, since I understand a good mic and preamp can go upwards of $1500++. (But I also know that some of the best mics like the Shure SM7b are only $350, and would really prefer to go the cheaper route.)

[Majoria]

Plug-in preamps? Isn't that like plug-in talent?

 

Duet is fine for quality of converters and preamps.

[weeman]

yamah hs series for the win i love my hs80;s