Home recording equipment

After reviewing a number of posts on another website I frequent, 2 programs seem to come highly recommended. Audacity is the first, offering simplicity and ease of use for most general purpose recordings. Next would be Reaper, which boasts a number of features to cover almost any general recording, and a lot of extras for specialized mixing to cover most all of your recording and CD making needs. They did say that a download of MP3 transferring software is advised and necessary to transfer your product to MP3 or CD. I'm going to look into Reaper myself, as I understand it is well worth the $60.00 pricetag!!! Geof