Frank, I am sort of following the trail you have blazed.
I ordered VSampler a few days ago from Cakewalk; I bought Sonar 2.0 earlier. I am not sure what version I will get. Presumably, 2.x something. I downloaded Live-Styler and paid the registration fee, but have not been able to convince the program that it has been registered. I am thinking I will try Kontakt as my main sampler. If I can get this stuff to work, I will try VoiceMachine for vocal harmony. If and when Karma Creator comes out, I will get that too. I am not in a hurry, my hardware studio sounds great. But I would like to whittle things down to a controller (Roland A-50) and a laptop.