setting up studio

i am opening a recording studio, i do not wish to use a workstation, i am using a pc computer which i will be upgrading to firewire soon, I need to able to record 15 to 20 tracks simultainiously, can someone tell me the basic gear that i need to get, i have played for a long time but dont no shit about hardware

You could buy two Presonus Firepod’s and chain them together, this will give you 16 inputs/16 outputs… You can chain up to three firepods together to get 24in/24out on 1 firewire port.
Firepod is supported in linux and osx.