I down loaded Pro tools yesterday (Free Trial) Wooo...

What a piece of _ _ _ _ _  Illogical, unorganized, ugly, simple Sonar tasks are complex...
I just can't figure why Sonar is not at the top...
 
Maybe just give Sonar away to everyone for free for like a 6 month trial and you'll own the world!
 
Just sayin... :)
 

PT suffers from what I call the Adobe syndrome. They were practically the first to do what they do at their level, and since most studios signed onto using and getting really good at PT, the software found it's way backed into a corner. General Mac and Windows menus and user intuition improves, but power users will be alienated if the PT structure changes with "the times". It's a no-win situation. Adobe has fought this battle for years. New users don't find it easy, and power users won't tolerate change.

Pro Tools is the ideal replacement for someone who used to use a 2" 24-track and mixer. I say that not in a snarky way, but as an appreciation of their understanding of a target audience. Obviously I much prefer SONAR for too many reasons to list here, but I've done lots of Pro Tools sessions and appreciate it for what it is.

I too am a Sonar fan and it is my weapon of choice for most things, but you will find similar comments about any DAW when people first load it up and are used to another. I guess you could say that UNfamiliarity breeds contempt in this particular case. After so many years on Sonar I absolutely hated Ableton Live when I first tried it. Now I find it quite fun!
 
I couldn't agree more though that once you understand the depth of what Sonar can do it is hard to fathom why it isn't more popular. That's not to say that it isn't well loved! I suspect it is because the reward you get from Sonar is exactly proportionate to the effort you put into learning it, an almost foreign concept in what seems to increasingly be a widget driven world striving for instant gratification where a user manual is a bridge too far.

I do most of my stuff on Linux, and one of the programs on there is a graphics program called GIMP. In many ways it is on the same level as Photoshop. They had the same problem in that they had users of GIMP who had used it for years and didn't want it to change, as well as users of Photoshop they wanted to attract. So they did something unique - they made the icons and menus programmable. The result is you can make GIMP look and act very much like Photoshop, making easier for longtime Photoshop users to switch over. Longtime GIMP users can stay with the menus and layout they have learned to love over the years, and the makers of GIMP can change things around to make it easier for noobs to learn.
 
It seems SONAR is starting down this road with the theme editor. We have already seen themes that mimic Logic and older versions of SONAR. The use of lenses can make the software a bit less intimidating by removing all of the toolbar options except for basic tasks. If the menus become adaptable, then you could literally have themes and lenses that could make SONAR appear like just about any other DAW. This makes it easier for folks to switch, and new users to learn.

Why Photoshop? Integration with Lightroom or Bridge and support for the Adobe Camera RAW/Lightroom lens/camera profiling system is one reason. And Photoshop/Lightroom have the same head start in the market as Pro Tools of course, and for the same reason. They were the best thing going at the time they were introduced, and if I'm honest I think Lightroom is pretty much unbeatable when it comes to working with a few thousand RAW images. Which even hobbyists can accumulate surprisingly quickly nowadays when it costs no more to take 100 photos than it does to take one, and almost everyone carries a camera dressed up as a phone (Adobe even provide lens profiles for iPhones and they're surprisingly decent cameras).

Third-party plugin coders usually focus on making sure their stuff works with Adobe's stuff because that's where the market is. Adobe's colour profiles are also pretty much a standard as well when it comes to reproduction work. Printers/copy houses know what they're getting and what settings will 'just work' and if they screw up there's no room for them to argue the colour profile isn't really quite what it says it is.

There's also the integration with Adobe's other design and web-building applications for those that do that kind of thing.

The Gimp's very impressive in the same way the Gnu/Linux project is and I've recommended it to quite a few people looking for an inexpensive and good photo editor over the years, but Lightroom is an absolutely killer application for photography once you get over the initial learning curve, which is at least as steep as any DAW's if not more so. And the Adobe Creative Cloud model then makes Photoshop available for not much more and they both tie into each other and Adobe's tablet/iOS apps.....

Adobe's business model has been very clever over the years, and they still add new stuff into their software, refine what it does and keep it evolving and pretty much state of the art. Rather like Cakewalk do really, only Adobe have the PT-like advantage of being the first to get their foot in the door.

There's not a lot of DAW users amongst my musician friends around here. Most ar not songwriters so just want to play. And for those of us who do use DAW's I think Sonar is installed on most every machine in one form or another. 
There were a lot of Pirates which I think was a 2000 decade thing. So some people had one of each DAW running and lots of back and forth with different local projects was happening. At this point in time a lot of these are now full time Sonar users and have bought the lifetime membership. That was obviously a good move. 
There are I think a few Pro Tools rigs in town owned by hobbyist with money to burn. One guy spent $2,000 to take a Prop Tools course on line!!!! He still ask me questions and has a long way to go.  
 
I'm a Sonar user because it was the first DAW plunked on my lap Via Roland which I was a dealer for at that time. 
I was aware of ProTools but to me that looked like something you needed special $$$$ Hardware for. 
I have tried most all the other DAW's as demos and ( downloads)  and never found anything better that would make me switch. 
Pro Tools is one of the few I've never tried and If I do it will only be so I could kill a mild curiosity