General :: Recommend A STUDIO / ARTIST Distro?

There are several articles, questionairres and forum threads around the net helping newbies to Linux choose a distro, but there appear to be none which specifically help people choose one suitable for design, studio or home recording.

- I'm a professional graphic designer who also dabbles in music production in my own time.

- I currently use Vista 64 on a reasonably powerful HP desktop.

- I'm not afraid of dabbling in basic programming, but overall I'm a beginner in that area.

My criteria:

- A OS that runs smoothly and reliably.

- Has a concise range of applications, but includes the best of the best. Quality over quanity.

- Has good hardware support.I don't want to spend weeks trying to get my audio interface, scanner and graphics tablet working.

- Is very secure. The main reason I'm moving to Linux is because my laptop eventually became riddled with Trojans despite my best efforts at keeping it clean.

- Preferably supports 64 bit.

- Looks slick (yes I know that's a bit superficial and it's not necessarily what Linux is about, but if I'm gonna be staring at a screen all day every day it might as well be attractive).

I've done a bit of research, and looked elsewhere on this forum for advice but it's strangely lacking (or I'm missing it). So far Ubuntu Studio, Sabayon, ArtistX and PureDyne look pretty promising. GNUartist, Open Artist and AV Linux also seem worth considering.Obviously I'm prepared to try a few different ones to see which one i gel with. I just wondered if my above criteria screams out for one or other of the available distributions, so that I can have a good starting point.