Use Ableton Live as your main DAW & Sequencer, go ahead and rewire anything you want.
Most of the equipment from M-audio are top notch. Oxygen49's great, i've used it three times, once live. I love how you can map the knobs to certain parameters of whatever and tweak the shit out of it. Lovely. If you have the budget, go for it. Another point to take is the number of octaves you want on your keyboard. I'd go for a standard 2-octave keyboard since I really dont know how to play majestically (lol) on a keyboard.