I like to make field recordings and so I've been using a laptop, but my laptop needs replacing. I have a great laptop for work, which I could use for the field recordings. I used Universal-USB-Installer-1.9.3.1 to create a bootable USB Drive for Linux Ubuntu Studio, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio for this Linux version (ubuntustudio-13.04-dvd-i386). Now, I have the ability to make recordings using ANY laptop along with my Fireface UCX. This is a link to the manual for the DAW that comes installed on this version of Ubuntu... http://en.flossmanuals.ne...view-of-the-interface/ It appears to be a DAW without MIDI. I have succeeded in recording using it with 256 buffer latency, which is pretty good for the purposes, but admittedly I can do better with Sonar. I have recorded 8 tracks at 44.1 (24 bit). It has all kinds of FX. Frankly, it's a lot of fun for free. I'm hoping to get a nice rack workstation in the fall, and using a portable drive with my UCX is just really cool. I don't even have to bring my laptop when making recordings at a friends place. We can use his! I just plug my USB hard drive with Ubuntu studio on it and the UCX into my friend's PC and we're off.

On further investigation there are midi apps and you use a routing engine called Jack to divert signal flow between apps. Definitely different from Sonar's all in one solution. Lots of little applications work in conjunctions to get the big picture... I should also mention that I have to use my audio interface in CLASS COMPLIANT mode in order to get it to work. The UFX does NOT show up unless I do this. My native PC Interface does show up though. So if I wanted to use this to record a single instrument through the microphone jack on the PC itself, I could.