Being in the happy position to have a Dual 800/Motu 828 and an 'old' 32 track NuBus TDM system, I can shed some light on why people still use Pro Tools. OK here's a scenerio. I want to record a vocal alongside 30 tracks of audio with DSP approaching 100% on the Dual, Farm cards maxed out on the PT - ie lots of plugs ins. On the Dual system. Enable the track to record. Bugger. Can't bus to a plug in or external reverb during recording. Bugger. I can hear latency. Try to lower the buffer size. Bugger. Can't use all the plugs/tracks now. Bugger. Use Motus cuemix. Bugger. have to route to a mixer to get reverb on the vocals. Record vocals. Bugger. DSP usage too high to play back the track - have to mixdown some tracks. On the PT system. Arm a track. Send to an existing reverb plug or to an external reverb. Record. Playback & mix. See? When time is money, you spend the extra. I'm hoping OSX will improve this, but if not I'll get a basic PT system for recording and use ESB. Regards Stephen Bennett. Composer and sound design. (UK) henry fool & The Fire Thieves www.chaosstudios.co.uk Author of 'The Fast Guide To Logic' and 'Making Music with E-Magic Logic Audio' www.pc-pubs.demon.co.uk