[peppertree]

The most important thing, having used virtually all of the options, is Pro Tools is elegantly designed software that makes sense. The others have so many user interface nightmares jammed into them that it will take you much longer to learn them and when you get there you will always be swearing at them. I look forward to being able to praise PT5 in similar ways, but PT4 is actually useable for audio at least.

If you learn PT you will find that you can bring your work into most professional studios and post houses and feel right at home. It's the ADAT/common denominator of Computer based Recording. Logic and its lesser peers are generally for techno/dance fiddlers. Sonic may be a better designed system but only has traction for mastering work.

The problem is the music customer is generally pretty dense and looks at hoo-ha features over usability. PT has less features you don't need. Simply the way PT is laid out, where you can zoom in to arbitrary depth on any track *in context* with the others, rather than getting a seperate window for each track...is so utterly correct that every other music software designer ought to get their heads handed to them for missing it...and their lame graft-ons to try to mimic that later fall catastrophically short. Tracks, like words, are fairly useless out of context.