On top of those things you have, I spent about $300 on a condenser mic and preamp and about $150 on an audio interface. I lack quality studio monitors or monit

On top of those things you have, I spent about $300 on a condenser mic and preamp and about $150 on an audio interface. I lack quality studio monitors or monitoring headphones with a flat response, they're kind of pricey, but necessary to make professional sounding music. Any speakers or headphones you play your tracks through will add their own sound that makes it difficult to mix or master properly. The tracks might sound great through the speakers or headphones you're using, but like garbage through other ones. With flat monitors, what you hear is only the sounds of your tracks. For software I use the vast array of audio production tools on linux through kxstudio and elsewhere. My workflow tends to be, hydrogen for drums, rosegarden patched through various plugins for midi, all routed into ardour alongside any audio input tracks. I'll usually record track by track. I use ardour to mix everything, then I take my mixed down track and master it using jamin.