another vote for Cubase. i also hated Cubase VST, but the regular Cubase works pretty well.
there was a review in the most recent Tape Op of Wavelab 6, which sounded pretty cool -- easier to use than Cubase or Pro Tools apparently, but still pretty reliable and useful and everything. i was intrigued, but not enough to actually go out and buy it.

I love Nuendo, which is currently very expensive. It used to be significantly different (better) than Cubase, but that's no longer the case. If you get Cubase, you've basically got the same DAW as Nuendo, from a track/mix perspective. I think the current Steinberg DAW model is the best I've seen, and I've tried nearly all the others.

I went from Sonic Foundry Acid, to Vegas, then to a hacked copy of Cubase SX 1. That pile of shit software at version SX 1 blew, yet it was still a bit a head of the Sonic Foundry curve in terms of features. When I finally had it with the cracked version of Cubase SX 1, SX 2 came out. I have been happy ever since. I passed on Cubase SX 3, yet I upgraded to Cubase 4. Cubase 4 is solid on both a Mac and an XP box.

what's the difference between the SX (latest version SX3) to the standard cubase?

I know this isn't really one of the options but my recommendation is for Ableton Live. If you're constructing songs "in the box" few things can compare, it's midi implementation is great for beat-making, i've been using it as my main DAW (a lot of people still think of it as a sequencer or live performance software, which it is and then some) for a few years now and it's so intuitive (except the channel mutes are called "speaker on", which is weird, maybe a german thing) check out the demo, i think you'll be surprised.

what's the difference between the SX (latest version SX3) to the standard cubase?

Steinberg's feature comparison.

edit: sorry, that's for cubase 4 - I'll keep looking for version 3 comparisons.

They merely dropped the SX part of the product name.

+1 for what busbus said. Cubase is awesome. Been using it since VST 5 and I'm sticking with it.

If you're using midi to any significant degree, Cubase is about as good as it gets. The last release of SX3 was an incredibly stable piece of software, whereas I believe C4 is suffering from various significant bugs.

I'm using Reaper more and more these days - it's wonderful for pure audio work, but the midi-related stuff is extremely basic when compared to Cubase or Sonar. Also, Reaper features no destructive editing although that's not much of an issue to me since I don't do much editing at the moment.

In terms of Reaper stability, the guy (Justin) updates the software roughly once a week, so it's unlikely you'd suffer from the same problems you did a while ago.

I used Tracktion for the first time recently - seems incredibly well designed and particularly well suited to working with loops. The lack of a 'virtual mixer' put me off, but different strokes...

I keep hearing about folks having issues with Cubase 4 over at cubase.net, however, I have yet to encounter any issues. That said, I don't do Midi stuff, just live band recording. It seems those folks mostly do major virtual instrument stuff though.