Pier,
“When you hit record on a punch-in, will it flip the monitoring from playback to the zero latency input? AFAIK only Steinberg’s hardware will do this. This has been a major crippling issue with running SB on Mac for the entire time they’ve been on Mac.”
Not true.
I use RME (currently Fireface 800) and this is just NOT a problem, if you use Totalmix for monitoring.
I run a commercial music studio, with up to 8 separate stereo headphone feeds to the talent. Totalmix handles all of that.
For drop-ins, setting the option in Nuendo to Tape-style monitoring (it’s always set to that), I hear the recorded track until I hit record, after which I hear the new take live. Seamless punch-in, no latency.
The only downside, compared with traditional hardware desk/recorder monitoring, is that the input I hear from Totalmix isn’t identical to the playback of the recorded track (which will include effects etc in Nuendo), it’s simply the feed from the studio.
But what’s BETTER, is that I can hear the live input pre-drop-in, in case the talent isn’t ready, or whatever. With traditional monitoring, you can’t hear that, because you’re listening to the off-tape track.
I would not now bother with DM, even if it were available for RME on Mac, Totalmix does it for me.