Glad to be of help! However, do remember that working with a control surface is something you have to practice with and learn to re-train your muscle memory and become truly fluid with it. This will be less of an issue because Console 1 is intended to support SONAR as well as be general-purpose, but don't become disappointed because it hasn't improved your workflow after a week or two. It will likely take you a month or so to get good at using a control surface.
 
As to mastering...you can always try a free LANDR preview and see if it gets you closer to where you want to go. The only plug-in I consider essential for decent mastering that SONAR lacks is a maximizer type of plug-in, but you can get really close with the LP MB, followed by the Concrete Limiter to control any leftover peaks.

This is true; I am prepared to put in the time it takes to become proficient at using Console 1. Hopefully I will get my money’s worth out of it.
 
Can you recommend a Maximizer plug-in excluding Waves products? I have been tempted to give LANDR a try. I have read mix results from users.

I recommend you to demo the recently released bozdigitallabs "the Wall". It's set at 40% retail price till October 29th.

I haven't heard of bozdigitallabs "the Wall" before but I will look it up ASAP...thank you.

Wow, just $40; that is a very good price, have you used this product before? I will give the demo a try. Do you think it offers anything more than what the Concrete Limiter can do?
 

I bought The Wall pre-order. It's meant as direct competitor of the Waves & Izotope Maximizers and I like it as  a transparant limiter sofar. I haven't demoed Concrete limiter, but the Wall offers dual limiter mode and a flavor bar (compression vs  clipping/distortion). Maybe you can do a shootout between both?
 

Thank you, for that price, it is worth a try.

I guess you dont need any of the two. Pluginwise you find everything in Sonar, so now you only missing the control surface features of the Softube. It seems to me its a market gap - there should be a simple MIDI product that costs $-20- $30 with say three knobs, two sliders and couple od switches to control DAW or effects soyou think you need to spend $??? on hardware.

timp410
I have been tempted to give LANDR a try. I have read mix results from users.

That's because it gives mixed results . But you can do free previews, and decide for yourself whether the results are better or not than what you have. There are three "strength" options; I find the low one doesn't do much, the high one does too much, so try the middle one. (If LANDR put two more options in there on either side of the middle one, I think it would be more effective.)
 
As to maximizers, I haven't tried the Boz digital so can't comment. However of all the ones I have tried, the Waves are to my ears far and away the best.

Afrodrum
I guess you dont need any of the two. Pluginwise you find everything in Sonar, so now you only missing the control surface features of the Softube. It seems to me its a market gap - there should be a simple MIDI product that costs $-20- $30 with say three knobs, two sliders and couple od switches to control DAW or effects soyou think you need to spend $??? on hardware.

I have own many generic midi controllers and they have all been to finicky to use reliably with Sonar. I even purchased the Cakewalk A300 keyboard and while it does the best out of all of the ones I have owned, it still doesn't have the level of integration of Console 1 or say my NI Mashine.