What do you mean I don't have the right cables?

Unlike a child at Christmas I decided I would delay unwrapping all the gifts I bought myself until a quiet Sunday afternoon.

First off I unwrapped the monitors along with the headphones - they're slightly different to normal stereo speakers/headphones in that they give a flatter response and a truer representation of sound (which could mean there's nowhere to hide the dodgy notes).

Next up was the main recording interface. Working in the world of packaging (yes I am a rock star in my day job too), I could appreciate they'd pitched this at the Apple market. I bought this one as it only has one dial on it, so I thought there would be less things to get wrong/break:

After that I unboxed the microphones. I would tell you about the specs on these but if I'm honest I bought them because they were reasonably priced. One is in a cradle to limit vibration which will be used for vocals and the other will be on a stand as normal, used for acoustic guitar.

At this stage I was hoping to plug everything in and give it a test run. I then found out my monitor doesn't have an HDMI input and with the cables I have, I can't plug the Mac Mini into it.

A quick before and after of the room: