How do I create unique high-quality piano music?

The DAW (digital audio workstation) is a multitrack recorder + mixer in software form. (There is a lot more to it than that. All kinds of editing features, special effects, sequencing, etc. are included in a DAW.) There are many DAWs out there. Some are free. Some are expensive. All will be capable of producing a high-quality piano recording.

The monitoring equipment you'll need includes high-quality studio headphones and, ideally, a set of studio monitors. Essentially, those are loudspeakers which have a flat response. (The "flat response" bit is important because most speakers and stereo systems color the audio on purpose to make it "sound good" to its intended market. You don't want that because you want to hear what's really there. The same thing applies to headphones. You don't want the most fashionable ones, you want the good ones.) Most studio monitors are active nowadays, which means you won't need a separate amplifier. Active monitors and headphones plug directly into your audio interface.

You'll need to experiment with microphone placement to get a good sound and a good stereo image. There are whole books written about that, but you might try to start by putting the microphones in an X-Y pattern above the strings. If you have a third mic, you might want it in the room or under the piano. I've seen both done. Here is a good article about it.

Note that you probably won't get a great sound your first time trying. People who do this for a living have years of experience and training on you. If you're expecting a world-class recording coming from anything but a grand piano recorded in a spacious studio with good diffusion, you're likely going to be disappointed.

A better use of your money (especially if this is a one-off thing) might be:

• renting time in a recording studio where they already have the equipment and expertise to make a great recording

• making a MIDI recording on a high-quality MIDI controller or a digital piano and sending the MIDI to a studio like this, this, or this, where they'll use a Yamaha Disklavier to render your performance on a acoustic piano and send you the recording.

If, on the other hand, you're talking about recording a digital piano or a software piano or a sampled/modeled piano patch from a workstation, synthesizer, stage piano, or whatever, you'll do just fine with the budget you have, and you won't need microphones.