New project studio setup

[hpoth]

Hi everybody,

my first post here!
I used to have a small home studio a while ago, I sold all this stuff and have moved a couple of times since then. Now I am about to move again in January due to a new job, and I want to start over and get new and better gear. It will again be a home based studio, to produce my own songs, but I also want to take first steps into recording other artists and bands.

I have made up my mind already so far that it will be based around a PC with Cubase SX, and a UAD-1 card (later a second to be added or a PoCo, not yet decided). I would like to work at 88,1 or 96 kHz.

Now here come the questions... I will have quite a big budget available, but I know there is a limit on what makes sense acoustically if you are recording and monitoring in a normal apartment. So I am not sure "how far to go" regarding preamps/audio interface/converters. I have a few solutions in my head and ask myself what makes sense, and what is wasted money for quality gear that does not suit my applications, acoustic environment, and skills. I see basically two soltuions:

- One-box-does-all: RME Fireface 800, Motu 828 MkII/896 HD/Traveller, Mackie Onyx 1620 mixer with Firewire card, or Mackie Onyx 400F firewire interface
I heard good things about the Onyx preamps... how about those from RME and Motu? Are they comparable? And what about the quality of the Motu and RME converteres in these boxes?

- Separate converters and preamps: Motu HD 192/2408 MkIII/24 I/O, or if I invest more... something like Apogee Rosetta 800 plus Firewire card. For preamps I would pick one really good mono or stereo preamp/channel strip for vocals/guitars/basses etc (lots of options here!), and a multichannel (Focusrite Octopre, Mackie Onyx 800R etc.) for where needed.

Sorry for the looooong post... any helpful comment is very much appreciated!

[I play in a ban]

My Mackie Onyx 400F should be here any day, I'll let you know how that goes.