here are my thoughts...the more powerfull a program the more time and effort it takes to learn it but, the rewards are greater....
so, I say jump in a get one of the pro DAW...
at this point all of them are very good and that includes reaper a shareware program that is
free untill you decide to give them 20$...
http://www.reaper.fm/
but, having gone through many of these programs...I always experence a learning curve...for example, in program x it take me one second to do y...when I first start using program z I can't even do y with out getting out the manual...drives me crazy
take it one step at a time the answere is always somewhere
if you have to learn it all alone then that is harder but, if you can get some support from someone that will help a whole bunch...so if you have a good relationship with another musician you might just want to use what they are....