Ok, please bear with me!

For years I've been doing all of my music production on a PC and switched to a MAC a while ago but am really now just getting to trying to make it all work out. All of this time I have been using VST to get realistic instrument sounds, which I thought was generic, but recently learned that every program has a proprietary format.

Apparently there is MAS for DP4 (what I currently use), VST for Steinberg stuff (I use an older Cubase 1.051) and now there is Core Audio & Core Midi.

Does anyone know how I can utilize Core Audio / Midi with DP4? It says it supports it, but I'm not seeing any instruments out there for Core (which sucks because there isnt' much for MAS either).

I understand that Audio Units is the new standard that, supposedly, all software programs are being forced to adopt by Apple since they acquired Emagic. I also understand that, soon, DP4 is supposed to support AU through a free patch (thank God, it was EXPENSIVE software).

I would be happy simply using MAS but the only MAS stuff I can find is for MAC OS9 and not X.

Can anyone give me some ideas? I simply want to record some MIDI and put realistic instruments to the tracks in DP4 and all this stuff is so confusing! It would see that VST is the ONLY way to go, particularly under MAC OS X, but I prefer the DP4 interface over Cubase. I would use VST Wrappers, but they don't support DP4 or MAC OS X so that really doesn't help much.

I know I can buy MachFive, but to add that much more money to something that appears to be very poorly supported (DP4 & MAS) seems ridiculous.

Should I be buying Reason? I know that DP4 supports Reason & Rewire and they appear to provide VST ability to DP4 but I'm just so unclear about everything that I don't know what direction to go.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

You CAN use Core Audio Services with DP4, along with AU effects plugins and instruments. (I believe you need DP 4.1, but I think that's a free download if you have DP4.) I've been using it successfully for a couple of months, mainly with MachFive and Moog Modular V softsynths. I know that the Spectrasonics Atmosphere and Trinity AU instruments also work in DP4. Reaktor 4, while it does provide an AU version, does not work in DP4, for reasons that are still unclear - Native Instruments is working with Apple and MOTU to try to fix it.

MOTU has always rejected VST in favor of MAS, so it's a step in the right direction that DP4 supports AU plugins at least. MAX is still supported as well, and in the case of instruments like MachFive, which comes in both MAS and AU versions, DP4 will use the MAS version automatically instead of the AU.

As far as MachFive is concerned, I recommend it highly as a sample playback engine, as long as you have the hardware to support it. I've used many of the available soft samplers for Mac, including SampleTank, Unity, Halion, Kontact, and others, and I find machFive the easiest to configure and use. It also has a very powerful sample-conversion app called UVI, that so far has worked everything I've tried with it - EMU, Kurzweil, GigaSampler, and Akai CDs, as well as SampleCell libraries. It can read PC as well as proprietary format CDs that no other program can access that I know of. That alone makes it worth the money,

I haven't tried it yet, but the fact that MachFive is available as an AU instrument should make it compatible with other apps than just DP4, so I wouldn't say it's poorly supported.

Also, here are a couple of good sites for finding and tracking AU releases:

http://www.kvr-vst.com/

http://www.audio-units.com/