The best thing to do is keep it stuck in the past, limit it to your own limitations and understanding and expect others to come down to that level so you are comfortable. Don't dare look beyond.
Don't dare want it for studio work, DVD or Surround mix.
There is certainly truth in your comments and you go a long way in helping recording artists overcome the current limitations to produce or create projects easier and more efficiently with third party programs that boost the abilities of BIAB. But there has always been a past. History tells us that music is about creativity and not gear and recording formats. Without folks like you accentuating product limitations, we may very well be stuck further back in the past than we are today. However, creativity has always been king and creativity overrides format technology in most every case. Tracks are most often rejected for content quality and not format. Especially if a piece is difficult, expensive, untimely or impossible to replace. Would most producers, commercial or amateur, of a recording project reject a track from Joe Bonamassa if the track was restricted to 320 MP3 quality due to some contractual stipulation? Probably not.
From Wikipedia; Multitrack recording: " The process was conceived and developed by Ross Snyder at Ampex in 1955 resulting in the first Sel-Sync machine, an 8-track machine which used 1-inch tape. This 8-track recorder was sold to the American guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor Les Paul for $10,000." $10,000 in 1955 is equivalent in purchasing power to $94,193.66 in 2018.
Three track recorders were the most popular medium in the 1950's and early 1960's in commercial studios but they were not multitrack recorders, they had to record all three tracks at once. Such a limitation was overcome by innovators such as you and utilized many 'third party gear' solutions until economics and technology caught up.
In regards to what we do with home recording and BIAB and it's format quality, 1/4" magnetic tape is the past. Later, cassette based medium was the past. Millions of demos and home recordings were made using these mediums. Some made it into big time recordings.
"Don't dare want it for studio work, DVD or Surround mix." Literally thousands of hours of these inferior medium recordings made their way into mainstream, commercial recordings by some of the era's biggest recording studios and artists. My guess is that nothing has changed. Today's higher quality of inferior medium coupled with what recording engineers can do with the expensive, high quality tools they are proficient with, added with the fact that so many people now have fair to remarkable home recording equipment and skills to operate that equipment, have rendered the inferiority factor to a greatly diminished factor in the recording industry.
I don't totally agree with Bob's (Jazzmammal) assessment regarding 24 bit recording in commercial studios being a huge benefit to them. To me, the real professionals don't necessarily benefit as much as the inexperienced recordist or other low cost, lower quality recordings do from the higher quality formats. The commercial professionals have the skills, training, facilities, equipment and environment by default so they are normally working with better, cleaner tracks out of the gate than the average home recording artist. Conversely, they are also much better equipped to restore or adapt an inferior recording into a main stream project than we ever will be. In most respects, BIAB recorded RealTracks and the ability to programming these random audio pieces into customizable arrangements are the overriding benefit to the home recording BIAB customer more so than any other feature.
Saying all that, I do fully support the proposal to upgrading.
