I've gone through a lot of gear (well, for me anyway) over the past five years.
I have two mics that I use that are perfectly fine for what I do. An AKG414-BULS and a Neumann KM184. If I am singing, I use the AKG for vocals. If I am doing solo guitar I use both mics and do a simulated M/S trick I learned (I think) from one of Doug Young's posts here.
I have two channels of John Hardy M-1 preamps. I just sold a Motu 8-channel interface. I'm likely selling my Hardy preamps. I plan to buy a new Apogee Duet. The Duet into Garageband or some other inexpensive or free DAW will likely be my signal chain. I've owned a Duet 2. It was a fabulous little device. The Hardy pres are wonderful, but the upgrade over the Duet pres is hardly noticable to anyone except under a microscope, and they aren't nearly a portable. In fact, most people really can't hear a difference.
The best home recording I ever made was using my two mics into Really Nice Preamps into a Yamaha AW4416. I remember just setting up the two mics and going for it. I think the performance was the key — not my mastery of recording techniques or gear — and I'm just more interested in that than upgrading to boutique quality gear anymore.
I was in a studio yesterday working with a drummer. The drum tones were incredible. The engineer was running an Allen & Heath mixing console into 1/2" tape — nothing fancy. Really sweet sounds.
In a pro studio, I understand why a truly pro engineer would want to keep upgrading to squeeze out that last 1% of improvement. That's their job. And if you enjoy spending time with gear and software doing the same at home, cool. I'm amazed at the results I hear from some of the recordings folks do at home. The funny thing is that just as often I'm amazed at results folks get with supposedly inferior gear.
If I NEED a pro recording at this point in my musical life, I'm going to a pro recording engineer. I just found that the time and energy I was spending on the gear and recording techniques was time I should have been spending practicing guitar and writing songs. YMMV.
