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...

[jesse]

the thrust of my argument is this; the very essence of recording music, the fundamental princaple of the modern recording proscess from les paul on, has been the consept of multitracking. If i am going to play a double lead or harmanize a vocal part i expect that the biggest problem should be the quality of proformance, and not whether the two parts synch up after the fact. All the other doodads aside (as great as they are) why does it cost a fortune just hook up good mic and listen to it in headphones while you play, or better yet listen to a backing track while you record a second, third, fourth track. I took that to be a given...no?