Hey Craig_a_h,
Perhaps we should stay in contact on this journey and share the glory when all is said and done! Ha!
As it stands right now, I've got four DAWs I'm considering, all of which, I'm pretty sure, support VSTis, which is a must for me: Reaper, Cakewalk (totally free and well developed), Mixcraft and Mulab.
Reaper's probably the top dog of these, but it's quite techie, and I am not a techie; however, there's a ton of videos and other kinds of support for it, so one can always find answers.
Cakewalk used to cost several hundreds of dollars, but it died under its then current developer (Sonar, I believe), and was then picked up by Bandlab. They decided to continue the develpment and, to boot, not charge for it. It's quite the program, as I understand it.
Mixcraft and Mulab are underdogs but apparently very good programs. Mulab is quite simple and easy to use, so I'm told, which is attractive to me, but still quite powerful and able to do all I want to do. I'll be doing more research on it down the road. It's my second choice so far, that and Cakewalk.
When I used to play video games, I would research the game for as many days as I need to in order to not have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak; I'd learn the ins and outs, the dos and don'ts, the this, that and the other before I'd ever play. So too it's the same here for learining about DAWs: study, watch videos (learning about DAWs in general as I go, reading articles and reviews, etc. Right now I'm spending my time watching a series of great, great tutorial videos by Kenny Gioria, one of the most respected YouTubers on Reaper. I'm not watching to remember, I'm watching to observe the using of Reaper, asking myself as I watch if this is a layout and style for me? As it stands, I think it's a bit too much for me, but it's still early on. We'll see.
I'll do the same, but probably to a lesser extent with the other three programs. Depending on the wealth (or lack thereof) of videos and support options, I'll narrow things down. (Oh, and I'm still doing a refresher through Marc Sabellius's course for Musescore...got brush up!) After all is said and done, I'll pick one and see how it goes.
Finally, the last area of study will be which VSTis to get (free first!).
As for Cakewalk, here are two reviews to which I'm giving a lot of attention: 1) https://www.slant.co/options/26342/~cakewalk-by-bandlab-review and https://www.slant.co/options/26342/~cakewalk-by-bandlab-review. The first review seems more balanced, and I'm giving it a lot of thought.
Well, good luck.