Jan 03, 2010 10:38 pm Hey man, welcome to the club. (HRC that is heh)
Well, for budget mixers, the Behringer Xenyx mixers are probably okay. What it boils down to really is what you want to record, and how many inputs you'll need at once. You will definitely want to consider getting an interface of some sort. The Line6 toneports are good external USB interfaces, and the Echo Audiofires are also pretty good and use firewire. M-Audio makes some okay cards and interfaces as well.
You just need to figure out how many tracks you plan to record at once since you'll need as many inputs on the interface as you have outputs coming from the mixer. Also, if you're not recording too much at once, you may not even need a mixer, and could just connect the mics/instruments directly to the interface, and do all the mixing in the software. It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
As for software for the Mac, you could look into Ableton Live, Reaper, Cubase, and there's probably a few others that have versions for OSX. I know Reaper has a pretty good reputation, and several folks here use it. It's also pretty cheap. I use FL Studio myself, but I'm on a windows machine. Though at some point I may make the hop to reaper myself if I get more heavily into audio recording. You could demo some of the mac versions and see how they fit in with your workflow, and go with what feels comfortable to you.
Hope that helps!
