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I'll defer the Skype aspects of the question to the Skype-knowledgeable.

It is a smart idea to run recordings through something that gives good signal strength. (I'm sure your headset is great for real-time listenting, but voice mics are significantly better at recording good sound and ignoring noise.) If possible, using a true voice microphone (like a Shure SM58 (industry standard), or the Nady CM-100 (excellent value for the price))) will genuinely and dramatically improve the sound of voice. Also, using a microphone pre-amp will actually let you have more flexibility of tone and sound warmth. (I'm not associated with, nor do I have ties with Musician's Friend. I'm just using their links because they have good write-ups, good pictures, and the clientele usually writes good reviews. I also am not an affiliate.)

If you have recordings that have ambient noise, this is caused by a myriad of things. One of these is device self-noise, another is room noise, and another is microphonics, and another is line/proximity noise. If you spend a few minutes reading about these things, and get familiar with noise factors, your recording capability will improve dramatically - even with a small investment of time.

An excellent and easy-to-use sound cleaning (post-production) tool to remove tons of noises from your vocal recordings is Sound Soap. I can't begin to sing enough praises to this software for audio clean up. It has drastically improved many impromptu, non-studio recordings. The basic version of SoundSoap is great for the budget-minded or for the person who doesn't want to have huge, variable control of channels and frequencies for noise reduction (means: it's a great easy-button solution). The more advanced SoundSoap and suite is good for professional applications.

It is Dolby's encoder.

Having previously worked for a music software company, I could recommend Steinberg stuff to you. If you find it is a bit more than you wanted to pay, try this link. Though I have never used it myself, I have heard good things. SRP is $199, so I'd imagine the street price to be $150 to $160.

Bias-Inc.

• There's bo-zillions of VST plug-ins out there already
• Cubase is cross-platform & the VST format also works on PCs with a re-compile. So why should companies like Steinberg fork their existing plug-ins; VST for x86 and 'audio units' for MacOS X?
• VST is popular and seen as 'open'. Audio Units are unknown and are MacOS only and the API is owned by Apple, which will be seen by others as a Bad Thing!
• Companies like Bias, Inc. that specialise in VST plug-ins now have to do double(ish) the work to support two platforms & standards. Why?

I would bet there's a large sub-population of musicians that would really appreciate a relatively simple 4-track audio recording/editing/mixing app. Creative people often want to get right into the creating, not knob-twiddling

I must have been unclear in my above statements because I am one of those people! and anything I might have said which leads one to think the contrary is in error :)

My wife bought me a new Martin a few months ago. I bought Deck LE and an iMic hoping to amuse myself doing some recording...but what I really want is iMovie for audio!

As a Mac user I love this kind of news. I do hope, however, that any ensuing product from Apple using Logic software isn't just "pro" stuff. In other words, I want an audio "iMovie" not just an audio "Final Cut Pro."

A free-with-purchase-of-a-Mac audio application... what would it look like? 8 channel recording, mixing, auido cd burning right from the app...what else? And what about microphone/midi input? I just bought Deck LE 3.0 (waiting for the 3.5 update for OS X!)... perhaps it would be a bit like that?

What you're looking for is a VST host program. This could, possibly, come in all sorts of forms but the most common is usually a sequencer/editing program that supports the use of VST plugins within. Do NOT buy Cubase just for that. Cubase is overfeatured and expensive. There are a number of free or rather inexpensive host programs out there for the Mac platform. Two that come to mind are VSTi Host and Bias-Inc's Vbox. That one is more impresssive looking, which functions as a plugin managing system, and can function either integrated within a larger host(such as Cubase)or on its own. It retails for 99$.