we'll be starting to gig next month, and yeah i'm doing fine so far with cubase. how is ableton better? do you mean in terms of reliability, or otherwise? The only advice i can give Ross is to figure out the sounds you want your synth to make - the Virus range can do most things but i think they're more suited to dirty stuff, a'la NIN. Nord synths are pretty cool, but for the most part are hideously overpriced considering what they do. Bands such as Muse use Nord synthesisers live, on record they use mainly Roland JP8000s. for colon openbracket style stuff, there are a few VSTi plugins that emulate the whole 8-bit carry on. explain more, my boy:D