well...
pro tools HD has a 48 bit mixer, and definatly more headroom than cubendo.
also i saw a test here...
http://www.recordproduction.com/mpg-event-june05-video1.html
well worth watching, some people agree some disagree.
TDM is 24 bit fixed because it's based on the DSP chips on the HD cards.
so if your input on a track is too high (not talking about ad conversion),
it will clip the plugin, so you will have to watch the levels.
a 32 bit vst will not clip, because the headroom will be automatically adjusted.
talking about headroom :
Pro Tools is integer-based ->> like their ads say : over 300 db of dynamic headroom...
32-bit Floating Point (Cubase) internal processing gives nearly 1500dB of internal dynamic range !
win xp is a 32 bit application, also modern cpu will work better with 32 bit / 64 bit daws, as they use 64 / 80 / 128 bit architecture.
while 24 to 32 conversion and back means unnecessary calculations... of course this is all just theory..
dont know about mac though... still working on xp... everyone hates me for that , hehe.
but maybe i'm not up to date, dont know about pt 8 and its internal structure...
still pt seems to be the choppy chop master... hopefully steinberg will
release a beat detective clone ;-)