Vinco - I'm sure they use all the DAWs they can and get lots of endorsement money for saying they do. I don't pay much attention to what the music mags say, just what I know from watching producers/engineers work with Protools

Bottom Line: use whatever you want, then try Protools and learn why it is the industry standard.

As for sound quality between DAWs, as far as I'm concerned the DAW itself has little (or nothing) to do with sound quality (assuming there's no processing on) - Mics, Mic Pres, Digital convertors are where the sound is made. I've heard the stuff about the Protools summing buss and ya know what - it's BS. The Protools summing buss sounds awesome.