for dj play and making easy "mix" tapes, ableton live gets full push for being reasonably priced, and is exremely streamlined for its purpose. Pretty cheap too.
SX for full featured productions. Logic/Cakewalk are same type of products, but SX seemingly has the broadest userbase. Ranks on the expensive side tho.
Reason is a good package for a affordable, and comprehensive package that'll get you started with electro style music quickly. Great for beginners, with a strong userbase.
Aside from these "mainstream" options, there are alternative options:
Macky tracktion, is a cheap package that has a distinctive interface that you may love, or hate. It is very easy to use, but does not come with much. I've done some large scale commercial projects on it tho. (installation soundtrack, many soundtracks for 2005 Aichi EXPO, 2 demos for a vocalist, and a soundtrack for a DVD cleaner lol) I just used tracktion to host kontakt 1.5 for a rush of summer projects on my powerbook, while I was away from my PC. I doubt many people use tracktion for such demanding tasks.. I was on the verge of stopping my use because of some bugs... but hopefully they've been fixed in newer versions.
my story here:
http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... 4&forum=31
Orion, is also one of the rising underdogs, maybe pretty mainstream by now. It comes with a bunch of stuff, which I'm not sure is useful or not. Anyhow, it's like a mix of tracker and a normal sequencer. It is heavily pattern based (because it's like tracker), and looks great for electronic music. Wouldn't recommend it for "play MIDI live and quantize later" type music. Recommended for music that make you think of knobs.
and there were a couple of free ones that seemed like it could cut the cake, but I still haven't had the time to test in a real life situation.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2006-09-06 18:58 ]</font>