Sam,

I don't have RB and probably won't until the whole VST timing thing gets resolved (tempo information being passed to plugins in the right way), but that's because my main modulation effects that I use have auto-tempo features.

Why did I switch to something else back in the day? ASIO. Plain and simple. I wanted to use all of the cool VSTi that were available; to PLAY them, not just pass MIDI data to them while recording the output.

Once I got hooked on that drug, I haven't been able to do without it since. I went to the next cheapest product that did have that feature. As it turns out, I got hooked on the user interface as well.

Now the DAW I use doesn't manipulate audio 1's and 0's any differently than any other. But the SPEED at which I'm able to do what I do with that DAW is markedly different. It maps to my mental model better than other DAW software does. That is not true for everyone.

One of the things I can do faster in this software is nearly impossible with PG products. At one time, I spent 2 or 3 hours a week editing hour long lectures into 20 minute segments. In order to do this quickly, quick snipping and cross-fading is a must.

With my DAW, it was almost effortless. Main decisions were which bits to keep and which larger sections to toss, not how to perform a cross-fade between sections. Each hour long edit had between 30 to 50 individual audio snippets.

I was able to get that done in 2-3 hours - which is pretty amazing considering I had to actually audition an hour's worth of material. Granted, there were visually obvious 'pregnant pause' sections that I could zap without auditioning, but still - try performing any audio manipulation process 50 times on an hour's worth of material and see how long it takes.

Absolutely no way to do it as fast in PG products' audio editor or in many other audio editors - some costing 10x what my software cost. Pro-Tools, the revered and vaunted product that it is, added this type of editing feature within the last few years as a pay-for add-on! I forget what they called it, but I can tell you, I've been using the feature for nearly free since about 2004.

With the built-in snip and cross-fade function in my DAW it was ridiculously easy to make this happen. For that situation/application, it was a must-have feature once I started using it. I won't go back to something without that feature.

So, before you go shopping for a new DAW, I recommend listing out what tasks you find laborious or downright irritating, and then do some comparison shopping.

Loop handling is one feature that I used in ACID 2.0 that I bought at a local big-box retailer and really enjoyed, but it wasn't enough to make me abandon PTPA which I was using solidly at the time.

Playthrough of VSTi - well once I sipped from that fount, I never looked back. It is a must-have, must work, no questions asked, no special handling of ASIO/WDM, no excuses feature for me now. I think I'm kind of an oddball on this forum with that requirement, but not on other DAW software forums. It's an expected feature. It is simply a non-negotiable item for me. I didn't care what drivers made this work. I could have used the grzbd drivers from some russian website if they would make this work. ASIO can be a cantankerous beast, but it is what it is and what made play-through capability of VSTi a reality in the 2000's. I can't describe to you the hours of fun I've had playing synthesizer models that simply are not available or have never been available in hardware form. One example that I recorded: http://rockstarnot.rekkerd.org/songs/2007Fall/rockstarnot%20-%20ambishot%202.mp3

Anyways, don't jump ship until there's something on a different ship that you simply cannot do without.

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