I know Pro Tools is the 'standard' and whatnot, but I have to be frank - I've yet to see anyone do anything on Pro Tools that you can't do with DigiPerformer or Cubase. (I'm gonna get bashed for this: ) While I certainly don't advocate illegal piracy, do be aware that you can get versions of software out there for free, so if you try it out, decide you like it, you
then go buy it - a good number of companies won't take back opened software, so if you use it and decide you hate it, you're stuck.
Then we get into the portability. ProTools works only with pro tools hardware. Cubase et cetera work with anything Windows or the MacOS interfaces with. You can spend a couple hundred on an Audiophile 24/96 (which I have, and handles things incredibly well), or spend a bit more on something like the Firepod, or the MOTU 828mkII (which I also have, and can't advocate enough).
Don't limit yourself to something just because it's 'industry standard', or 'what the pros use',
especially if you're just starting out. If everybody used 'what the pros use' when they first started, the world would be overrun with
these in people's basement studios. Also, you can take whatever you record on your computer with whatever proram you end up with, and import it into a studio's system for a final mixdown. I'm recording using Cubase and my MOTU, and I can take my raw data over to the ProTools studio down the road for mixing through their ever so pretty SSL setup... In the digital day and age, nothing is permanent, and nothing has to stay put.
You'll help yourself out a lot if you sit down and map out what you need - how many channels do you need to record at once? Can you submix them? (4 mics on your drums mixed down to a mono channel, so your recording interface only needs one for your drums, etc)? If so, how many mics do you need, and how many mics do you *have*? How many tracks do you want to play with in your recording system - lighter versions of Cubase give you less channels, but cost much much less, so if you don't need 256 tracks, you don't need to pay $800 for your DAW software.. and on and on it goes.
One thing I can promise you is that it's never as simple as it is on paper. My biggest suggestion is to
work with what you have though. Buy some kit, and make something work with it. It's far too easy to fall into the gear trap... the "I've got (x) but I can't do
with it, so I need to buy (a), (b), (c), (C.5), (d), and (e), to make it work" mentality.
If you put up exactly what you want to record - how many tracks in your console, how many mics/lines you want from an instrument, what kind of effects you have/want, etc, you'll find suggestions are much easier to make.
Best of luck to you though. Will be very interested to hear the results.