Don't be offended, but I'm having a hard time understanding your post. Let's try to separate the problems.
1) You say you get a delay of voice transfer when it goes from the mic to the soundcard/software and whatever else it does before it comes out the speakers....it also echos on itself like an automatic delay. recorded the files dont have the echo....
So you only hear the echo while recording but not during playback? I suspect that during recording the speakers are being fed by both the direct signal (from the mixer channel outputs) and the recorded signal (from the computer). The echo you are hearing is the time it takes the signal to pass through the mixer, soundcard, and computer, and then return to the mixer. Some how you need to turn off one of these paths to eliminate the echo.
2) you say you know its something around the bit rate going from safe to fast but of course you know fast will make do an audio dropout when it gets going.
Are you talking about the latency settings (sometimes called buffer size) in your soundcard or the conversion rate and word length being used (44.1 Khz, 48 Khz, 16 bit vs 24 bit etc)? I don't know what to say about this other than to start with the default setting recommended by the sound card manufacturer and adjust them until you aren't getting dropouts.
As far as suggestions for a better computer setup...
1) Loose the Celeron and get a Pentium 4 machine with 2 hard drives (one for windows and your tracking software, one for your audio files). Get rid of Windows ME, use Windows XP, or maybe go the Macintosh route.
2) Get as much RAM as you can afford.
3) Go to an outboard audio interface like M-Audio, Aardvark, Tascam, etc. There are lots of reasonably priced units out there these days. Search this message board for info.
Good luck, let us know how you are getting on.
