I think, at least on the Yamaha/Steinberg front, that companies are now starting to roll out analog or digital/analog boards that are WRITTEN for a particular DAW. whoch to me means you don't have to spend hours trying to coordinate setups and have issues with products not working well together
this to me is the future, havin a hybrid approach based on the DAW's partnering with hareware vendors to combine the products
the Yamaha N12 i use with cubase and nuendo
the new allen and heath Zed16 i think it is and sonar
real analog boards with pre amps, comps, eq, verb etc that come wiht templates and one FW cable to hook to your pc to allow you inbound routing and then outbound mixing thru the boards
with the yamaha you can hook 2-3 of them together and get with 3, 24 mono and 6 stereo tracks perfectly aligned with cubase or nuendo in and out
this is one area not talked about here is how great it is to have products developed together so setup and maintenence is easy.
for my setup i can have say 2 N12's with just 2 FW cables and all the connectivity, templates and in and out's i need already writeen for me, and tweakable however i want
anyway, i dig this approach if for no other reason then i do believe the sound is better, it offloads a ton of CPU from plugs i would have used, its rock solid and set up for me, and you know it forces me to use my ears again. there is no gui for the mixer eq or comp etc so i have to LISTEN
and its fun