if you are looking at ableton, you might want to wait for bitwig by some of their ex-employee's..

I bought "live" a while back , they couldn't deliver it in 4 weeks so I cancelled the order and their attitude to customer service ROYALLY sucked. Along with m-audio / NI , I won't buy any of their products or will do my best to avoid them.

live's greatest asset is the elastic none tempo loop side *BUT* it's most used thing is in a live environment.

reason is quick , that's why I use is .. but well I still have to use sonar and cubase as well and would regardless for 1 major thing the VST angle.. things in each I like, and in cubases case stuff I know from the atari ST days , along with clab/notator (still have my ST / clab) not used it in years.