kennedy,
i haven't used gigasampler or reaktor. do these use ASIO drivers? of course, cakewalk uses MME and fruity loops uses direct sound drivers. overall , my system is VERY stable running ASIO programs, like reason...i am able to play reason with a midi keyboard with ultra low latency....i opted for sonar because it does live input with plug ins, real time midi sequencing with soft synths and acid style looping....when i plug my guitar directly into my sound card using a few different plug ins to record real time guitar tracks, i often get dropouts, especially when i'm also recording live midi with soft synths.....that is why i said sonar isn't totally stable on my system....i think this is probably a driver issue, though a faster processor wouldn't hurt (using p3 1GHz)......we all expect a program to work flawlessly, and it should...that is why i caution anyone thinking about sonar who wants to take advantage of the real time synths and plug ins....but if you can get sonar to work this way, it is very cool to be able to just plug in a guitar or midi keyboard and start recording great sounds with no hardware synth or sampler or guitar amp....i've always wondered how cubase and logic fare with recording audio with plug ins in real time......i'm guessing that they can do real time soft synth sequencing just fine.....reason does it, and it's an ASIO program.