Yes, you can play while loading. BTW, $800 awful cheap for a laptop that will actually do anything, and the Virus TI keyboard is not sub $2K - Sweetwater and Musicians' Friend list it at $3,560. I think I've fallen prey to conspicuous consumption! (Sorry, I can't have my Virus value demeaned.)

Only KARMA and the HD-1 (ROMpler) architecture have passed on to the M3. It doesn't have Wave Sequencing and the other synth engines.

Anyway, I have Sonar 6, but have not recorded a song on it. I keep it as backup, as I intend to use it, someday. In the meantime, I'm one of those who uses hardware sequencers/recorders.

I know there have been complaints, but I'm one of the people who actually like the OASYS' sequencer/HDR. The fact that you can bus any track into a synth engine is one cool aspect of the bus system. I use the Vocoder, sequencer and bus system a little differently than your typical robot jox:

Voice controlled Choir

What I often like to do is setup 2 or 3 keyboards and just jam - laying down a soundscape. (you need at least 2 keyboards to do the riff for "Enjoy The Silence", so a DAW won't solve that for me. ha ha!) Anyway, the OASYS has Multi-Rec (not found on a lot of hardware, at least), which allows you to record up to 20 tracks (16 MIDI, 4 audio), simultaneously. For the 3 keyboards, I can record them, sing along - hear it all through the L/R outputs, but record what I want to isolated record busses.

Obviously, I've heard some outstanding work done with Logic and other DAWs. There's no denying that. As some of you know, better recordings may require multiple computers and sample libraries. I just asked someone what he was using and this was his reply:



That's a lot of dongles! (and money) I have 4 computers, including a dual Xeon beast. I'm not technology shy, but when it comes to music, I like to sit at a keyboard or two and do everything right there. I'm more likely to fix a part by physically replaying it, than editing - though I do both. I actually like the direction that keyboards, like the Roland Fantom G are taking (OS-wise).