I've got both....Running Vegas on a system with Sonar and Cubase, and Nuendo loaded, plus much other software. Avid DV Express on there too. I regularly run Sonar and Vegas locked up using a VMR, (virtual midi router) and it works well.
However...in depth mixes with lots of effects can jam the system and drop frames occasionally. Even with a UAD1, I still occasionally drop some frames due to heavy effects. So yes, it can be one system, but beware there may be problems.

Yes, so I thought, given the surfeit of complex multi-tasking all around. VMRs, eh?

(After semi-exhaustive further research)

I'll admit >everything< looks good, and all suggestions have been followed up on. At this point though I'm particularly interested in Cakewalk Home Studio 2004 (or XL) as a point of entry. I am also very much intrigued by the latest Propellerhead Reason, which, if you will, might be the "Vegas" of music software with its uniquely retooled program. I need to study the nature of this further though, until it's dead familiar.

If you haven't tried ANY music software yet and you just want to get your feet wet. You can get Acid Techno 3.0 (or similar) at Guitar Center (or similar) for $20.

You'll be surprised at what you can do with even the most basic Acid program.

Acid is nursery school compared to the others, but you can experiment and learn in a matter of minutes... with no experience at all.

Actually, you can get Express (or whatever it's called now) for free from the mediasoftware site at Sony.
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.co.../freestuff.asp
gets you to the free version. 10 tracks, but that's quite a bit...

Thanks...alot of interesting things to explore.

A question for you Spot. Isn't this eating memory like breakfast?
Those virtual samplers? I mean, if I load up one of the Grand
Pianos that comes on a 500 MB sample CD (high quality) isn't
it loading 500 MB in my memory for just that instrument? The
discs mentioned in this thread probably have a whole orchestra
in the same amount of space, but the high quality discs are using
that much (or more) PER instrument!

Any thoughts on that? Or is one sampler soft better in managing
memory than others?

If you used a library that is that large, yes. But even a 500 meg sample piano such as the Grail doesn't load up all samples at once. Even if it did, you'd not be accessing all that memory all the time. I don't worry too much about it only because my laptop has a gig of memory and my desktops have at least 4 gig in each one.
I run the Grail a lot, and have never hit an out of mem yet.

Loops on the other hand use very little memory, because it's just repetitive allocations of the same sample. Largest loop I've ever come across is around 16 meg. Most are about 1 meg or less, at 44.1 or 48K sample rates.

So which virtual sampler soft is your favorite? In particular with
something like the Grail?

Vsampler
Opens EVERYTHING. And MUCH more stable than the crap Gigasampler that gets so much attention. I've got that too.
www.vsampler.com

How specifically do you apply Vsampler? What kind of projects?

Most any kind of project. Vsampler is applied via MIDI, and can contain samples, loops, oneshots. I've used it on things like Samurai, Hidalgo, tomb Raider II and just about every broadcast spot I've done.

That sounds terrific Douglas and it isn't expensive with a demo
available. Thanks for the information!