I've been a Cakewalk user since Pro Audio 6 circa 1989 so had to think long and hard about which DAW I would migrate/defect to in light of recent developments (or lack of, moving forward...) Reaper, Cubase, Mixcraft, Podium, Fruity Loops, Ableton Live and Bitwig all have their strengths and weaknesses certainly but it's Studio One which strikes me as the one DAW closest in lineage, feel and methodology to SONAR. The bundled instruments in S1 are not on a par with SPLAT but they do have a dedicated sampler (Presence XT) which ships with > 13 gig of high quality sounds which are easily on a par with Kontakt's factory content. Most of the functionality is drag and drop including a very intuitive groove quantise window for MIDI and AUDIO which is a joy to use. Despite what many in these forums have stated to the contrary, I feel that S1's MIDI editing capabilities match those of SONAR (or are at least sufficient for my MIDI oriented needs, despite their being no MIDI event list view). It even has a 'Transform' tool and multi-track PRV which are spookily similar to those found in SONAR. On the down side, there is nothing to match the console emulation and aesthetic delights of the Cakewalk Pro Channels/Console view alas. However, all that said, the real game changer for me is the dual buffer settings that Presonus allow you to set up on installation. I don't know the technicalities behind this approach but long story short, you ramp up buffer size for mixing and ramp down for recording and it's done automatically 'under the hood' via hardware low latency monitoring (if your sound card supports it) or software low latency monitoring, otherwise. Unlike SONAR, I can have very large projects open with loads of tracks, FX, VSTs and tracks with no crackling or popping or prohibitive latency when either recording or mixing. Studio One strikes me as the DAW that Cakewalk were never quite able to bring to fruition.