[herecomesyourman]

I would argue that protools sounds noticeably worse than any Stienberg product for tracking or mixing. As it seems to truncate and / or dither low end response below 50Hz in a noticeably artificial sounding way.

I measured this once with a spectral analyzer vs samples in other DAWS...Radar seemed the "truest" to me...followed by Cubase 4 at the time. (This was almost two years ago) Keep in mind Radar comes it's own converters that are worth a considerable amount of money.

I still use Cubase 4 as my primary DAW...and I also sometimes use Ableton Live in conjunction with it. But all my live tracking goes to Cubase.

I currently use RME converters...though I know that half of the post readers will yell and scream about how Apogee is a safer bet...but to my ears I actually prefer my Fireface 800 to any Rosetta I've tried. (It felt more "even"...or flatter to me, but whatever)

The money I would have spent on Protools HD went into great mics and outboard as the previous post suggested. My Neves sound fantastic...my Great River EQ 2NV's were both worth the money...and my compressors I couldn't live without. All that stuff combined would have equaled an HD system outfitted with plugs. I prefer my analog hybrid / native setup, but that's just me.