Mac Osx - Core Audio/midi, MAC OSX - CORE Audio/Midi Options

[cshortreed]

Ok, please bear with me!

For years I've been doing all of my music production on a PC and switched to a MAC a while ago but am really now just getting to trying to make it all work out. All of this time I have been using VST to get realistic instrument sounds, which I thought was generic, but recently learned that every program has a proprietary format.

Apparently there is MAS for DP4 (what I currently use), VST for Steinberg stuff (I use an older Cubase 1.051) and now there is Core Audio & Core Midi.

Does anyone know how I can utilize Core Audio / Midi with DP4? It says it supports it, but I'm not seeing any instruments out there for Core (which sucks because there isnt' much for MAS either).

I understand that Audio Units is the new standard that, supposedly, all software programs are being forced to adopt by Apple since they acquired Emagic. I also understand that, soon, DP4 is supposed to support AU through a free patch (thank God, it was EXPENSIVE software).

I would be happy simply using MAS but the only MAS stuff I can find is for MAC OS9 and not X.

Can anyone give me some ideas? I simply want to record some MIDI and put realistic instruments to the tracks in DP4 and all this stuff is so confusing! It would see that VST is the ONLY way to go, particularly under MAC OS X, but I prefer the DP4 interface over Cubase. I would use VST Wrappers, but they don't support DP4 or MAC OS X so that really doesn't help much.

I know I can buy MachFive, but to add that much more money to something that appears to be very poorly supported (DP4 & MAS) seems ridiculous.

Should I be buying Reason? I know that DP4 supports Reason & Rewire and they appear to provide VST ability to DP4 but I'm just so unclear about everything that I don't know what direction to go.

Thanks for any help you can provide!