Recording at home?

I've been trying to figure out If there's a way to record at home using a computer as a mixer?
What equipment do I need?
I've been hearing about stuff from zoom and line6 which allow USB recording..
Basically I need to be able to take
1 vocalist and 1 guitarist but
My dream is
1-2 vocalists
2 electric guitarists
One drummer and
1 bassist
....also
How much $$$ will this cost?

Easiest is probably a basic version of pro tools with an m-audio USB interface. They have several versions, with the most basic costing less than 100$.

This isn't a professional solution... but I'm not a professional musician. You have to get some kind of audio interface... or a pro-audio level soundcard. Other than that, I just use the free opensource sound editor, Audacity. (I'm not making loops and whatnot.) Audacity allows me to record multiple tracks and mix them as I see fit, and that's all that I need.

Regarding software, Audacity's great. For $60 you can get Cockos Reaper, which will do everything you will ever need a DAW to do.

Audio interface such as Line6 TonePort (aka Pod Studio)
Not a good "pro-level" sound card because you need very, very low latency. The Creative X-fi (Emu engine) is no good for this, as I found out later (but great for DAW re-mix & mix-down).

Several mic and guitar inputs, line-in (stereo bus feed) line-out, monitor and headphone out. To get the full number of ins and outs you have to use their Gearbox or PODfarm software, but it has FX and emulation - I turn them all off.

TonePorts / Pod Studios usually come with Ableton Live DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) but I have Sonar HS - this DAW your mixer and recording studio.

For recording a full band it sounds like you need the recently discontinued Tone Port UX8 (8-mic or 8-jacks input plus the rest of the monitoring in/out). Most of the interfaces (incl M-Audio) are 2-input i.e. 2-mic or 2-jack, my little UX1 is 1-mic and 1-jack, bigger ones may have extra holes but you can generally only use 2-feeds at once.

You will also need a compatible MIDI controller, this is usually combined with a keyboard for the synths (in the DAW/PC). They have recently started building these into the interface box.

Then you have to learn how to use the DAW and you can spend a lot of time messing around doing that instead of recording your music ...

For my band home recordings I bought a Tascam US-1800 (http://tascam.com/product/us-1800/) which comes with Cubase 5 software. It has a ton of XLR inputs and the software works great too. I can mic up the entire band for live recordings, or do click tracks and multitrack recording. We use this setup with a Desktop PC to do all our band demos. Takes awhile to get it all setup and learn how to use the software, but definitely worth it.

Beats paying a studio to do the recordings, thats for sure!

For my band home recordings I bought a Tascam US-1800 (http://tascam.com/product/us-1800/) which comes with Cubase 5 software. It has a ton of XLR inputs and the software works great too. I can mic up the entire band for live recordings, or do click tracks and multitrack recording. We use this setup with a Desktop PC to do all our band demos. Takes awhile to get it all setup and learn how to use the software, but definitely worth it.

Beats paying a studio to do the recordings, thats for sure!

I've been looking at that 1800. Seems like you're happy with it.

We generally record scratch tracks with the drummer playing to a click and just a couple of mics in the room. Then we go back and add one track at a time.

The problem has been drums. I'm able to get six channels using two recorders, but I'd love to have eight channels. I had a two-track Tascam converter that died after a year, so I'm a little concerned...but that 1800 is exactly what I'm looking for at a great price.