Thanks Dub - good luck to you if you choose to go with Geist. It looks incredible and yes, I agree with you that the depth and power of tools we have at our disposal is mind boggling. We've come a long way from the early VSTi days = or even from tools like RMII and DR008.
I just pulled the trigger on RMV - $149 for an upgrade price of $39 from RMIII = way too good a deal to pass up.
The one thing that has me a bit concerned is that these tools are almost an environment (DAW) unto themselves. Phatmatik Pro is so simple/fast/straight forward - going to be hard to move on. Too many plugs - too little time. LOL