Help: Advice On Buying Sequencers, Plug-ins, Etc, sequencers, soft synths, hardware Options

[mceric72]

Hi, I was just listening to a demo of OPUS from the Vienna Symphony Library and thinking, wow, this would be a great addition to the home studio that I don't have. But seeing's how this would run me about $1k, I am forced to really think about what makes the most sense in building this studio. I have my controllers (with some leftover modules), I have my Dual 867 G4 (old school, i know), my recently inherited Reason 2.0, and I have my wallet with a music store credit card that'll allow me to spend about 2k on the 12 month special ($1,500 would be easier to swallow). But on the other hand, I have a unique opportunity to actually create a library of cues for commercial broadcast - so economical is good but not at the expense of productivity. I also here alot of people talking about manipulating envelopes and algorithms and editing loops, and while I'm sure these can be very powerful features, it all sounds very unmusical to me as I much prefer to find solid presets with little to no tweaking required while I would opt to play most of my rhythm tracks via a padded controller.

Here's where I could use some guidance:

I know Reason alone won't cut it. Logic Pro 7 is highly recommended as a Mac User, plus it has its own library of soft synth sample to add to that of something like OPUS. But assuming that OPUS is what you would call a third pary plug-in / will this even work with Logic or others as it seems to be discussed in association with Gigastudio and some kind of digital performance tool. This also puts me a little over budget, so are there competive libraries of this genre that are cheaper?

Is there a more practical option over Logic Pro i.e. buying Digital Performer at half the cost and adding OPUS plus another third party library and how much do I compromise on compatability with my Mac as I have heard there are streamlining issues? Would Logic Express be a smarter option and what do I lose with Express.
So that's alot of questions, here they are in summary:

1. Since I'm not recording, mixing analogue, is 867 Dual, 512 RAM enough to run 20 MIDI tracks or so enough processing power to avoid latency problems?
2. Are there great libraries in the vein of orchestral and contemporary score music (think Matrix, Trevor Rabin, etc). And can I get good mileage out of these without out having to constantly re-invent the samples via envelopes.
3. How do you know if a certain third pary synth is compatible with a certain sequencing software?
4. What am I compromising if I don't go with Logic Pro 7 in favor of say, Sonar or DP4.5 and is the extra $$ better saved or spent on another library, application, hardware, that would be more useful.
5. If I went with Logic Express, what am giving up?


Basically it seems to come down to finding a combination of sequencer and virtual instrument packages that will give me the most bang for the buck.

thanks in advance,
e