John,

Seeing as how no-one else has seen fit to respond to your helpful post, I thought I'd take the time to give you a little nod...

As a computer music enthusiast who works in both Linux and Windows, I'm always looking for cross-platform software. Although I deal almost exclusively with digital audio and not with MIDI or VSTi's, for those who do, this looks like it could be a dandy!
A long-time user of PowerTracks Pro Audio, I have on countless occasions employed another cross-platform program, Audacity, to augment PowerTracks - as a very capable audio editor and file converter.

Thanks for sharing your findings, and pointing out the possibilities for boosting the performance of our favourite Windows-based DAW.

just looking for clues...
Oren.
http://www.masteringmatters.com