Best Purchase...... RME Fireface 800, Mackie Control Universal Pro, Access Virus C / Virus Powercore Unlimited , V-Station, Sonar, Samplitude, Reaper, UAD and PoCo hardware and software.

Worst Purchase......

#1 all time worst - Everything I bought from Steinberg with the exception of X-Phraze
#2 all time worst - CME UF-6 (total junk)
#3 all time worst - Superwave synths (Eddie and Chris Gill are lousy crooks)
#4 all time worst - Tone2 stuff.

Worst - M-Audio Mobile Pre
Best - BCF2000 number 2 and 3 & 1 Rode nt2a

Oh and how could I forget... my tranzport.
Ooooh and Har-Bal. Yea Har-Bal that's good....

can my ex wife and my divorce count

Nah, disqualified on grounds of everyone having had one, and if they haven't yet, they most likely will.

Besides, you can now play the Blues and mean it, so who's complaining?

ORIGINAL: bunkaroo

Best: Sonar (natch), DimPro, EZDrummer, PodXt and Bass PodXt

Worst: E-MU Emulator X - piece of junk software, needs its own USB 2x2 as a dongle, just a waste of $300.

WOW thanks you just saved me a $300 nightmare, i was wondering
about how good it was to.

now i know

#2 all time worst - CME UF-6 (total junk)

Talk about a timely post

Worst:
I just bought a VX7, thinking it would be a great all around controller.

Keybed doesn't feel anything like I had hoped (somewhere between a Roland Fantom and Yamaha MotifES would have been nice). But I could have lived with the spongey keys.
The thing smells like burning electronics... and it sends out boatloads of aftertouch messages auto-magically.
When it was working a bit better (earlier today), I discovered that the unit always output Aftertouch on MIDI channel 2... not matter how I had it setup. Talk about stubborn! LOL
Did I mention the power button sticks?
Manual? Uhh... Don't even bother to open it. Makes Yamaha manuals seem clear/consise and chock full of useful info.

The only good thing I can say about the VX7 is that it looks nice... and is a great concept.
The reality is this thing's a cheap POS.

Best:
Ableton Live - Sonar Pro is great for my heafty and final builds but to throw down
creativity nothings better, dare I say even P5
Reason - can't beat the compressed format for sounds on a laptop and since you can
only have Sonar on one computer....
Motu Ultralight - Transparent Pres and, great GUI, Live mixer, low latency........get one!
Line 6 - Variax, Podxt Live: I'll agree that all digital will never sound as good, but the
flexibility, sound design, & gigging win.
Novation SL-Zero - Phenomenal, how did I ever interface without one, nuf said.
Stylus RMX / all Sage expanders - You can't get better sounding drums, check out
Skippy's Noizebox!
Atmosphere - again you just can't beat Spectrasonics for overall sound quality
Hercules Stands - look cool and built stage worthy

Worst:
Motu Mach Five - 8 gigs of useless sounds, frustrating reformatting,
Pro Tools - MBox 2 - the MBox 1 worked great, could never get MBox 2 to work, Digi's
are a little too proprietary for me
Built a custom PC and didn't get an Istar D series rack case - just ended up getting one
later

SoSo:
Dimension Pro - Great sounds I just haven't really used any of them on projects - a little
too other worldy for me perhaps
Project 5 - Could be amazing, but you can tell Cakewalks money is going elsewhere -
needs GUI update & hardware (like Torq)
KRK RP-6's - For the money they are a great buy...but then you hear dynaudio
BM5a's......absolutely no comparison!

You mentioned that you can only have sonar on one pc. Thats not true. You can have it on multiple pc's as long as you dont use them at the same time.
CJ

Thanks for the reply.....I've been doing it anyway.

Best purchases by far:
Guitar Tracks [2 & Pro2] - I was just about to shell out UK£200 [US$397] for a digital stand-alone four track recorder - when I spotted GT2 for UK£50 [US$99] in the local PC World store I took the DAW route, GTPro soon followed and I've never looked back.
Also worth mention is my hand made neck-through 'SuperStrat' with Lawrence pick-ups - bought it from the personal collection of the guy who runs the local guitar shop.

Worst:
Japanese Fender Presicion - it plays great but it's just so lightweight and to record it needs heavy EQ-ing added all over the range [it sounds OK sent through my 200W Maine stack but micing up the cab isn't a practical option right now].
Also Peavey 212 Stereo Chorus Amp - great digital reverb, very loud but very fizzy - hopefully soon to be exchanged for something with valves.

[Edit was speeling mistakk]

My best purchase was a Fostex 4 track tape recorder in 1986 ftom sam ash in new york city, This was my first taste in a dowmward finanncial expensive hobby at the time.
I paid $1400 for that back then and it bit me with the recording bug and that let to many analog purchases for the next 20 years.

My other best purchse was Sonar 6 Producer edition

The worst is having all this analog equipment that i can never sell, its grown a part of me over these 20 yeasrs. I guess there my babies. When i need to fix one of them up, i see it like tasking my baby to school shoppinh and getting him a haircut. I gotta trat my babies good and therll treat me better
CJ