Hi all,
this Forum lately has seen the active participation of many members, who have shared their talent with the rest of us; this has motivated me to record something new, after a hiatus of a few years due to personal problems that kept me away from music, but I have discovered that I am in the process of learning the basics again -so to speak- and this gave me the idea of opening this thread and asking how do you record your own music, and in particular:

1- Do you prefer the hardware route (i.e a dedicated multitrack recorder, like a Tascam DP-24) or the software route (i.e. a computer and a DAW like Sonar, Cubase, Audition, etc) or a combination of the two methods? And why?

2- How many tracks do you record at once? Two or more? In other words, have you ever taken advantage of the multiple outputs that some keyboards have to record -say- the drums on tracks 1 & 2, the bass on track 3 and so on?
This of course would enable later to process each instrument in a different way (adding effects, Eq, compression, etc), but not all the recorders can do this and -in the case of a computer based system- one would need a more sophisticated (and expensive) interface (read audio card).

3- Do you prefer to record your performance "live" (be it in stereo or multiple tracks to be mixed later) or do you prefer to lay down one track at a time?

I am really curious because -like I said- I have to face the same choices right now and what was good in the past might not be good anymore now (people change and so do their needs or priorities).
Thank you.