Just my 2c. The whole TI thing is most stable on the Cubase platform hands down, the AU version in Logic runs ok for most user's & the RTAS version for pro tools avoid like the plague. Because Ableton Live can run AU & VST plugin's there's a good chance you will have it stable in Live which is my DAW & also the only one that can do the 'Live' thing as well as the studio thing. It can also do a lot of other things that conventional linear DAW's can't, the routing possibilities are endless...way too much to get into right here but I wouldn't swap it for any other DAW on the market right now.

Hi Berni

Cubase seems to be getting the votes so far. Are you an ex-Cubase user?

I guess I ought to try to Ableton demo but I think in 'notes' and like to see a score. What things can it do that other DAWs can't?

Thought I'd also add that once you narrow it down to two contenders, it would not be a waste of money to buy the $99 version of each. Yes they have time limited trials but I find those to be annoying because I don't like time window pressure. The minimal version will be enough to evaluate the workflow and the philosophy of the DAW and help you figure out which one you want to be on the upgrade path for. I can't think of anything in the basic versions that would be different with regard to trying Virus compatibility, which seems to be your initial goal. In my mind the $99 spent on the one you didn't choose is not wasted, because you've increased your knowledge by knowing how to do things a different way in a different host, making you better overall. It's also helpful because sometimes if something is behaving badly, it gives you two separate environments to A/B test whatever it is that's in question. Sometimes you see something in a host that's not your primary preference that inspires you to try something new by switching over to the one you do like and trying to reproduce that feature. Also I think the freely downloadable FLStudio demo lets you do everything except save your project file, unless they've changed something.

I've used them all from soundtracker onwards:)

Check out the demo or lite version of Live better still, and yes there's piano scrolls in Live :roll:

Although Studio One is not an officially supported DAW I'm having very smooth experience with S1 2.65 and Virus Snow on Windows 7. S1 "track transfrom" function seems to be designed with Virus TI in mind, when you want to bounce your Virus Control track into audio you just hit a button and it automatically recognises that the rendering should be in online mode. Then you can move the resulting audio file, copy/paste it, cut into several audio clips and then transform back into Virus Control track by one click. Thus working with a Virus is as close to working with a native plugin as it gets. Also I don't have many bugs - there were some occuring when I was trying to insert Virus plugin into busy old projects, but in new projects Virus Control is stable and reliable.

Yes, it looks like a good program and that's a brill feature. I'm starting to believe that no one DAW will do everything :-)

However, because I was familiar with Cubase and I do like to see a score, I've dug out an old copy and I'm currently playing with that.

And having just splashed out on Komplete Ultimate 10 (+ Maschine AND an S9) there's not a lot of music getting made. But it's fun... :-)

On Mac Studio One v3 seems to play nicely with my Ti, and I like the fact that the realtime render mode kicks in automatically for the TI, even for 'convert to audio' (aka bounce in place or freeze). When I was on Windows I found Sonar worked best, again it has a nice realtime freeze and it seemed to be very snappy in terms of latency too.