Loss Of Faith, tepid digital waters Options

[jesse]

I am feeling rather defeated. last year i purchased an imac 800mgz, 256, and I have yet to match the stability of my fostex fourtrack. the consept of latency is entirely new to me. So I ask myself, and all of you, why would anyone purchase a 2500$ (canadian) machine then purchase 150 dollars worth of software (tracktion) and another 250 on a decent usb interface. currently i am using imic (60$) and i hate it. Back in the good old days, when a fourtrack cost 300 bucks (1994) there was no such animal as "latency". why then ten years and 3000 dollars later do i find myself in a less productive and more expencive situation? And all for a marginal increase in sound quality. My question is this: how much more do I have to spend to be able to find a program and input/output device that is comperable to the fostex cassette machine i had (still do) ten years ago? Have I gone through all this just eliminate the dreaded tape hiss?! Does anyone else feel like they have been hoodwinked by the glitz and gloss of a sleaker digital future?
I am only twenty-seven and already the future looks dimmer than the past.
...triing hard not to become a luddite...

[tunetwister]

First thing the i mac is a bit under powered, the faster your computer the less latency. Next there will all ways be latency. You can lower your buffer settings to reduce latency but then you run the risk of clipping your prossesor. I hate latency so I send out from my hardware mixer to the head phone amps. I will put on a bit of reverb with a hardware reverb for the headphones but record a different mix out of the board dry.
Why digitail you ask, becouse I can do things that I never could in anolog. It is clean and all edits stay first generation. It is easyaly incorperated with my video system. ect. ect.