Funny that no one is mentioning Mackie Tracktion? Yeah, it's only $150, but it's super easy to use, comes with some really nice plug-ins, and sounds as good as any DAW software (nothing beats analog, but it's sooooo expensive to run and maintain). For the record, I am running on a PC and also have Logic Platinum 4.8 on it, didn't see any reason to upgrade after Apple bought them. The learning curve on Logic is pretty steep and, while it's is a great program, it can also be very frustrating to figure out when you just want to do something NOW. Haven't tried PT, never bought any of Digi's hardware, it always seemed to be a little overpriced compared to other hw out there IMHO, so I can't comment on it. Tracktion does seem to take a similar approach as PT, 3 screens that you do everything in vs many different screens in Logic.
<0.02,
Roger