Homework for new DAW

I'm asking for leads on research for building a new DAW system.

In 2001 I had a lot of local and regional work coming at me for film and tv. I went out and bought a system that was copasetic with my audio partner's system for file swapping, etc. The principles were simple - don't be the guinea pig trying out the new stuff, if you're hiring or being hired by the hour you want the answers to tech glitches to be fast effective and easy to find (in other words, the well-travelled path) After about 6 months of homework on the subject I came up with:

2 hdd 80GB each
Asus custom with PIII 1.0GHz, 1GBRAM
Win98SE, Cubase VST/32
Gigastudio 96
Hoontech DAC/ADC2000 audio card with breakout box
hi-end mics, other gear

This allowed me to make a virtual in-home orchestra with high-end samples and have theoption of recording live vocals if I wanted, or turning the studio into an acoustic concert recording device.

I had always hoped that laptops and laptop soundcards and DAW software would evolve to the point where I could reliably reproduce this kind of studio in a laptop without 1.overheating after 2 hours recording or work 2.crashing constantly 3.having to compromise on audio intake quality or # of MIDI channels because of the laptop, soundcard or software compatibility.

I longed for the simplicity of something like Garage Band with the comprehensive ability of 96 virtual tracks in software.

Has anything changed since 2003? Is the DAW equipment landscape still basically rooted in tower computers or are availability reliability and power completely changed now for laptops?

[TimOBrien]

I'm using a Gateway M520 laptop (widescreen), WinXP, a Motu828mkII firewire interface and a Glyph GT050 80Gb firewire drive. Zero problems.

I use CubaseSE, N-TrackStudio, Soundforge and VSTi's like Kompakt, SampletankXL and Garritan Jazz&BigBand, so I do have a full "orchestra in a box". I also do video editing and 3D animation work, too...

If you want something like GarageBand, get Sony's ACID (the same guys who originally developed ACID wrote GarageBand...)

Hey thanks for the info.

Where is your sampler? Don't you have hang problems using the same hd for audio dump as well as your software synth?

I was just looking over Cubase SE. It's so cheap! And I can't see much difference between its 'special edition' capabilities and the much more expensive Cubase VST/32.

One more thing - have you ever tried to play and record a track with 30, 40 or more sampled midi tracks at once?