Planning to take the plunge...

[WarpCanada]

Did you end up buying an audio interface?  If not yet, I really would grab a FocusRite Scarlett and use whatever DAW lite edition comes free with it, and then buy something after you've spent some Time getting your head around the DAW world.

[AndyR]

I ended up going the PreSonus route, a week and a bit ago.

I went for the Studio 68c interface, mainly because I use 3 mics when doing live singer-songwriter recordings. So I needed 4 inputs.

I knew it came with Studio One Artist.

I tried the free Cakewalk for a while. That is Sonar as was, and it is very familiar (I had Cakewalk HomeStudio before I moved to Boss standalones).
It was cool, but I needed an interface...

I've been using Studio One 5.2 and a bunch of free stuff that came with for a week or so.
Just bought EZDrummer 2.
OK, I'm sold.
BR1600 is officially retired.

I'm about to upgrade to Studio One Professional, via their Sphere subscription deal.

[StephenM]

I think the best DAW is the one you know and get used to.  I suspect that most these days are pretty good and offer all of the things you need and more.  I personally use Presonus Studio One 4 pro and love it. I  certainly can't think of any reason to change.  I use a 4 year old pc albeit a fairly meaty one I7 32gb ram ssds etc on windows 10. There are several different cost options with different features but I think they are paid for.  The pro version has a built in project page for mastering albums or collections of songs.

I like this answer... and I would suppose that you get what you pay for too... I use Bandlab which is free and the reason I use it is because within 5 minutes of downloading it I was able to mix with it.  It's quite easy..... I tried Cakewalk and I banged around in there for an hour and couldn't even figure out how to get a track in there...so even though it looks like it has a lot more I didn't want to get lost in Wonderland...
now I stick with Bandlab because I know it...I am sure though it does not have all the best effects and autotune etc (I don't think it even has autotune)...anyway...I do think though that if you listen to Paul's recordings his results technically are very superior to much of what I have heard on SC....having said that at least some of that could be Paul's technical abilites.... but his software was also quite pricey...going back to my first line...
good luck Frank... I really like your songs and singing...I look forward to hearing more.

[StephenM]

Flash cracked me up with this one .... "It doesn't need a small spaceship to run it, (I have a 8 year old laptop running 32 bit Windows 7, 2Gb RAM and SSD disk (the old spinning rust was too slow eventually)."

still laughing

and I am with Andy on this....so much easier to edit and mix on the DAw then on the BR.... I did not mention that I do not yet interface to the Bandlab... I typically record on the Zoom or the BR and take the tracks off and put them on bandlab via computer (which is easier and faster with the zoom)...my zoom can be an interface however... I just never tried it yet...I may have to so I can report here whether it's easy or hard..I am really into easy these days...

[des0free]

I suggest Reaper because you can try it for free.  And there is a lot of information on forums.  And it has basic plugin effects included (and you can find many others online for free "VST effects")