i ounce met a dj at my school dance who had the full hookup. he asked me what i used for my production. i told him honestly "FL Studio 5". he laughed until i asked him what was so funny. he got up and turned around his laptop and showed me his, he had garage band pro (or something like that) and a large amount of really high quality vsts that you know by looking that they werent cheep. he gave me a smirk and said "you you dont have the best of the best, your not ever gonna make anything worth a damn". i replied simply. "an instument is only as good as the person who plays it" VST or otherwise.
this is what i use for music production
1 - outdated FL Studio 5 XXL producer Edition (it was free so idc)
2 - various free VSTis
3 - cheap Sony headset
4 - no MiDi keyboard, i use reg cpu keyboard
5 - no soundboard
6 - no mixer
7 - and to top it all off, no cpu. thats right i dont even have my own cpu, i have to carry all my sofware around on a cheap 1 gig flash drive! you jave no idea how hard it is to produce under these conditions! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! :P