Most stable DAW for Mac?

[Parka Dez]

I currently use a digi003 for all my recording and producing, however I also use this for my bands live rig. This live rig uses a laptop to control all of our patches, sends out a click to the drummer and backing to the PA.

As my band will be playing live, more often now, going on tour etc, I will need to keep the digi003 at home for producing while the live rig is stored at our practice rooms. So Im thinking about buying a Firepod as it has all the outputs and routing I need. Obviously this brings up the problem I can't use Pro Tools for the set anymore. So what would be the most stable DAW that I could get, keeping in mind if the price is anymore then, say £400, I may as well get a second hand digi002.

Would something like reaper be stable enough to run my set live? Or am I missing out on another DAW which would fit into the price range im looking at?

 

[gabriel g.]

logic 8

 

[rlcramer]

My vote goes to Logic 8 as well. While it's not 100% rock solid / uncrashable for me, it's still by far the most stable Mac DAW that I've used.

Bobby

 

[Parka Dez]

Ok cool. Would Logic Express do the job, otherwise it is far too expensive.

 

[Machinated]

logic has been pretty great for me since 8.02

pt hasnt been too bad either

 

[dani]

cubase doesn't really crash for me, although i'd doubt it's the most stable.

logic, being engineered by apple, probably is the most stable, although i think you're a bit more limited in terms of what effects you can use (only AUs)? i could be wrong.

thanks,

 

[Machinated]

AU, and TDM if you have the right gear.

that said AU seems to cover all my bases - cant be many plugs that have mac vst but no au (silverspikes ruby tube being one example).

 

[dani]

TDM? i thought that was a magic protools HD format?

agreed, that pretty much all retail plugs come with AU if they have a mac VST version, but some of the free plugins don't..

thanks,

 

[Kazrog]

Cubase 5 has been very stable for me. Logic 8 is more of a resource hog, and it will crash sometimes if you use any flakey freeware AU plugins (it's more sensitive about it than other AU hosts), but is definitely more efficient than Digital Performer. Pro Tools on the Mac is very stable as long as you follow Digidesign's rules to the letter as far as OS updates.

Generally, if you've got 4 or more gigs of RAM, and an Intel based Mac, both Logic and Cubase will run very well.

 

[Machinated]

yeah, you need the HD stuff on your computer, but if you have that you can use the tdm stuff in logic

 

[dani]

wow, didn't know that about HD stuff.

thanks,