[robj144]

I'm not huge into high end stuff, but I use a Alesis Multimix 8 as a USB interface and it works great. Although, it's fairly old now and there are a lot of options out there now. I also use fairly cheap mics that work well enough to me. I have a couple of AKG 200 large condensor mics that cost me about $100 each that I think work well enough and a Marantz large condensor that cost about $60. That's what I use in my home studio.

When I'm out, I used to use a Zoom R16 with those mics and that worked well. But for the past year or so I use a Tascam DR40 with a pair of Behringer C2 mics since they are very portable. Together with the internal mics, they actually do a really good job for just capturing a jam. If I wanted a higher level recording away from my home studio, I would and have used the Zoom R16 as an audio interface with a laptop and use the large condensors though. Again, the DR40 with the Behringer mics are amazingly portable and honestly do surprisingly well. And, the total price of all of it is about $250.

I also have used Adobe Audition for a while, but wanted to go up to a more complete solution and tried Samplitude a few years ago when they offered a bundle for about $150. I like the virtual instruments included with it and their sample library, but I always found the interface clunky and weird. Even after using for months, it was still clunky. Eventually, I decided to try Cakewalk by Bandlab and haven't used Samplitude much since then. Cakewalk is absolutely awesome for free. (Yeah, I know nothing is for free as they're probably selling my email address and statistics to other companies, but oh well....) Getting past my parenthetical note, it is a 100% full fledged DAW with just about every advanced editing and mastering technique you can think of... and they are updating it quite often too which is slightly unusual for freeware. And, to me, it is very straight forward to use unlike the months I used Samplitude. I honestly don't know why anyone would pay for a DAW who is starting from scratch unless you are worried about them doing shady things with your data.

In the list you have Cakewalk as free to $500. $500 was the price a few years ago before it became free. It is completely free now. Maybe you should change that?