Can you get a CD quality recording using the softwares listed? Yeah. Can you do it without having the experience (esp. your first couple of tries)? No. Eq'ing I think is the biggest problem with not having the recording sound loud enough. Especially if you plan on throwing alot of compression on. If you use too much compression you'll flatten your sound like a pancake, not too meantion work backwards with what you did with the EQ. You also need each instrument assigned to a different track (guitar, bass, snare, hi-hat, etc.) SO then you can treat each a certain way to bring out the good qualities of there sound in the EQ. Good EQ achieves clarity. SO good mixing is balancing the EQ spectrum when all the instruments are playing together. This is only learned though experience. The best way to learn is to model your sound after a sound you like. Take a CD with a good mix and then try to get your mix as close to it's sound as you can, bouncing back and forth and comparing. Write down everything you do also. Say you boost the bass drum at 100 hz, write it down. Then once you get the mix you can then look back and see what was done to get it. This will help you learn alot more rapidly as opposed to not knowing and learning. You'll see certains patterns that worked and the next time you'll know to start there. That's how good recording engineers can just sit down within 5 minutes and come up with a decent mix. Of course there's alot of doctoring to do, but they have a nice start.

Once you get a good mix with the EQ, then compress but very slightly. Your just going for alittle more of a bold sound.

Also you should question whether or not you want to compress? If dynamics is a big part of the music, compression will ruin the dynamics. You may just want alittle bit of compression to boost the the lighter parts into the mix. But not too much to where the everything sounds at the same level. Limiter does the opposite, it saves you from having extremely high peaks. Limiter is good on the vocals, because the volume of your voice changes so much. You don't want the peak to go to high, but you don't want to kill the softer vocals also. Compression the vocals slightly, focus more on the limiter.

BTW if your recording an acoustic song, don't use compression. Acoustic instruments like an acoustic guitar sound much more defined without it. Compression the distorted guitar though, especially if you want a nice heavy sound.

Mastering is pretty much EQing out the white noise. Which you need a special EQ instrument to perform this. Then normalizing. Don't use normalize if you don't have the tools to master the sound first. Normalizing actually boosts the white noise making the sound less clear. A light compression is what you need to boost the final mix to stereo level. However if your EQ mix is not good, you'll do worse.

DO the EQ first then compress.