Really great overview, there are so many pieces of gear that are very hard for a layman to understand. Their descriptons can be self-referential. I've been getting into audio / synthesizers a bit and it is such a hard world to get your head around!

It's remarkable how hard it is to get audio into a computer compared to how simple one imagines it should be. Understanding audio interfaces, mixers, power levels (mic/line/instrument), cable types (TS, TRS, 3.5mm) is not rocket science but it's a bit shocking when you see how hard it is to record anything besides your computer's built-in microphone.

And then there's the whole world of MIDI. It's at once an amazing standard and a confusing dinosaur (more the former) which is, again, shockingly hard to get started with as a n00b. When I started out I assumed I just needed a cable with USB A on one end and MIDI on the other end ... hah!

All that said: this stuff is really fun and it gets cheaper every day (although your wish list also gets bigger ever day). Companies like Behringer get a lot of flak for being cheap but they have made it so so so much cheaper for the casual person to get the hardware they need to try things.