Cool, Rain. I must have missed that. I'll definitely try it out. As long as the basic workflow is the same I'll learn what I need to know. Thank you.

m-audio / avid support of what I've bought in the past has been beyond shonky with none working drivers for 6 months that forced me to buy a new card.. and now they work.

they got told there was issues 4 times with their rubbish drivers and didn't fix them instead posted back with some generic rubbish noob guide to reinstalling.

they also distro'd for propeller heads for a while... again a nightmare, I had to wait 1+ month along with 400 other customers for it to be in the UK.

with making customers buy new midi interfaces etc.. also I think it helps loose them customers, and I won't buy anything from them considering how much I did in the past

I'm with you, Fog. I have various Avid products (and have actually had decent luck with them) but I refuse to buy a product from a company who will make me pay for help when I need it. That just sounds insane to me. I will definitely look another direction when I buy, at least until that policy changes. Too much competition from good companies who jump through hoops for their customers.

Avid recently announced that it was letting go of M-Audio. I hope that this means that they will get back to better support. 

I've had nothing but great experiences w/ M-Audio in the past, whenever I had to contact them. But I guess I've been one of the few lucky guys while they were under the Avid umbrella because I've heard lots of complains. 

But those complains alone were enough to incite me to look for alternatives when I needed a new midi keyboard, new portable monitors and such. A few years ago, I probably wouldn't have even considered alternatives. 

I own/have owned lots of M-Audio stuff, from monitors, to controllers, to preamps to audio interfaces. But at some point last year, I felt that the ice might be getting thin. I had already stopped recommending their product for a while because I didn't feel as confident w/ them...

Oh and glad I could help. Beware though - Cubase is a very nice product but Steinberg really isn't the best company to do business w/ either. They also have one of the worst track record in the business in terms of discontinuing products w/o notice. Not that Cubase is likely to disappear anytime soon, but, since we're talking about poor support...