Everyone has posted solid info here. There a billion factors. This stuff can be horrendous, unfortunately. However, I don't think it's fair to call out one (or 3) companies and say "they suck". I Presonus and Cubase and I'm very happy with both of them.
Of course, I have a clean operating system,
Recording Computer Troubleshooting: Is Your Windows Operating System Clean?, adequate hard drives, chipsets that are compatible, my latency set to a reasonable level, pay close attention to my CPU usage, etc and I'm doing all of this on a computer slower than most.
Brandon