I'm not into the recording thing, but several people have mentioned CoolEdit, and I believe there's a site link somewhere above.
The program was reviewed briefly in PCMagazine about a year ago, and they gave it a good review, which can still be seen at
ZDNET. I don't have a link handy to the exact article but you shouldn't have any trouble pulling it up.

ZD (Ziff Davis) is a fairly reliable source, although they are mainly into computers and not much into music-and-computers.

John