Truly Basic Questions, RQ: Advice on Mac hard/soft ware for music composition/recording Options

[thomas2755]

Currenlty, I run Cubase on Windows, hosting a variety of VST instruments, Native Instruments Kontact, GForce, etc. I have an old Aardvark sound card (that should tell you how old this set-up is), and am currently running the outputs to a 16 track mixer.

What I would like to do is this: replace the mixer with an on-board solution---something like RME?---get rid of Windows, for a variety of reasons, and maintain my VSTi's since I've paid for these.

I am looking at the Mac platform because I cannot find any realistic support for the VST instruments on a pure Linux platform, but perhaps I'm wrong about this?

Anyway, I am hopeful that some kind soul (or kind souls) on this Forum can make some constructive recommendations.

1) My budget is somewhat liberal; I don't expect to do this on the cheap.
2) My primary concerns are reliability and expansion capabilities.
3) Most of the music that I create is MIDI driven; I do play guitars (bass and six string) on some pieces, but am primarily sample/synth based.
4) I am keen to learn new software, and I am thinking that Logic + Reason might be a good starting point.

Any ideas, suggestions, or recommendations are welcome.

Thank you, in advance

Tom R