Home recording equipment

I was kinda hoping for a few posts about this subject to Mike. Although my group is regularly recorded, it is not at my house and I would like to start putting a lot of my own songs together on one nice sounding format, but with so many choices out there, I don't want to just jump and buy something. I hope a couple people chime in, and i'll ask on another forum I belong to and see what the general consensus is there. Geof