Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield

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12. Are you using a hard disk recorder?

I'm guessing this is some kind of hard disk or flash-based recorder from your description of scrolling through menus, etc. Still, 16 tracks is a pretty decent canvas for doing more than just simple demos. I did my senior thesis in college (music conservatory) on a crappy Tascam 1/2" 8-track open-reel machine (with quite a few MIDI virtual tracks slaved to timecode on the Tascam). You can do a lot artistically even when you are limited by your technology.

The other nice thing about digital recording is that you can bounce multiple tracks to free up more space without the generation loss you would get from analog tape. I used to bounce a lot of my guitar tracks down to a stereo pair, for example. That does mean you have to make some final mix decisions while you're still tracking, but you can usually get it right by listening to how the tracks fit in the context of the larger work.