Hi All,
Cards on the table.......... Real Job....I am an Architect ( ie:  The Real Kind ...who design and construct Built Environments).
Quick input here.
As an Architect ( And Music Performer / Amateur Producer) .... I am so very conscious of the importance of Imagery in maintaining Human interest. In a Nutshell.............consider the many hours you must expose yourself visually to  a DAW's  UI .
In your decision to move on from SONAR's  exemplary GUI ............. keep in mind you will be continually staring at this 'NEW' UI for hours and hours, days upon days, months even !!!
Please Don't ignore the importance of the GUI of any Sonar replacement...........that's all I wanted to say. :)
Much luck and best wishes in your Searches  /Evaluations.
Cheers .......Frank in OZ
 
 

It's hard to ignore the competitors' GUIs. I've been demoing lots and every one so far has made me go "Ugh...".

.

I had a look at other DAW's before I jumped fully into the SONAR adventure (before I upgraded from X3 to Platinium). And to me there was none that is so clearly arranged like Sonar. Either things are so small that I nearly can't see them on my laptop screen (I often work on the laptop) or you can just see 2 to 3 tracks at once. That is really no option to me!
Another issue in some other DAWs is that you do not have a good overview of the plugins set to a track.
And what is absolutly a candy for me in Sonar is the export feature. You have a lot of options, especially for simply exporting single tracks. That is missing in many other DAWs where you just can export the whole mix or selected tracks going thru the master, ugh.
All in all I do not think that I would ever find another fitting DAW at all. I just hope that Sonar will run on my PCs for life time (mine).

mister happy
The Skylight GUI is the reason I moved on.

sorry to say, but me too

Yeah
DITTO

Yeah...I have serious vertigo from right ear deafness.......my vision swirls around.......it has taken me ages to really take in everything of the sonar dashboard interface..........for that reason.......I'm seriously not changing........I bought a 2nd computer and installed sonar on it, disabled windows updates.......so when this computer dies in 2/3 years....ill have sonar installed on computer 2......that should give me 6 more years of sonar.....I love sonar........I really love it....nothing else compares

sorry, I haven't found any DAW with nearly as nice a GUI as Sonar's.  I think a redesign to look like all the others is a step in the WRONG direction.  If anything, make it more useable with touch-screens, make a  special view for those with touch screens with larger-print menus and larger versions of the tiny controls, but the current layout is phenomenal.  Skylight is a great feature, and the enhancements starting with Sonar X1 were very beneficial.

I have no issues with the looks of Skylight and the Tungsten theme, but I never had the pleasure of working in SONAR 8.5 which had/has a lot of fans. I still see comments with people being nostalgic about Project5, too.
 
Unfortunately, for me, I have graphical glitches with SONAR that I don't have with other DAWs or software. Most often when I'm docking and undocking. Sometimes things don't render properly, or bleed through, or the window appears at the smallest possible size.
 
Not really a big deal, and small potatoes compared to what can go wrong in a DAW, but irritating nonetheless.

I prefer functional GUIs that respect screen real estate resource.
I couldn't care if it used standard Windows components if done right.
 
A pretty GUI is essential for sales, but after continually working with
a UI for hours, days and months, having to close windows to make 
space to open other ones, well, it just kills my motivation.