That's good advice, especially re the drums. Once you get them down you are free to do what you want. However, there is an unmistakable difference in sound quality from a home system (even DI with quality gear) to playing through studio hardware worth a couple of hundred grand. I suppose it depends also on your own engineering skills (mine are non existant). I tried recording a load of guitar tracks at home over a few weeks to bring to a studio for twaeaking and mixing. I used my guitar rig which has some nice gear straight into an M-Audio Delta 1010 soundcard. I thougt it sounded good until we played it in the studio alongside the same rig and settings through the desk and studio preamps (again DI). Basically dropped the tracks straight away and did everything from scratch. The monitors in a home studio also have a big impact on what sounds good there as opposed to another system. I have a set of Tannoy Reveals, which are great but when I bring trakcs and play them through a set of 40K Genelecs they sounds atrocious. However, a mix done through the Genelecs sounds just as impressive on the Tannoys. One other thing about the studio, it's great to have a professional engineer!