Hi CJ-- welcome to the the board!
You gotta bring some information to the table before you figure out what you are going to need. Firstly-- what kind of music are you planning to record...what style, how many instruments, will it be vocal or instrumental only, etc etc.
How much money you have available to spend is another factor. There are people on this board whose entire studios cost less than another members mixing board (just to give you an idea of the differences in $$$$)
Then you need to take a look at the front page of this website, under the heading FAQs/Tutorials... that will give you a lot of information about the different options (and there are several different ways to go about doing this) that you will have available to you. Also check out the other headings like "Recording" "Digital" etc....get that information first.
From there, you should have a good grasp on WHERE you think you should be going with home recording. This is where the BBS comes in-- there are a lot of people here with a lot of knowledge and opinions...start firing away with questions (another thing-- use the SEARCH function-- a lot of newbie questions have been asked and answered many times).
This sounds like a lot of work, but if you put in maybe 2 hours of reading and searching, you will have a lot more knowledge (and thus, power) and there are many very experienced, talented and cool people who are willing to share their knowledge in order to help you with the specifics. Good Luck!
