Cakewalk user of 20 + years, bummed about the Cakewalk news.  I am building a new DAW that will be off-grid and a frozen box of magical music tools for recording, almost exclusively audio driven.  I have no issue buying a particular version of Cakewalk since this PC will never see the internet again after the day it's born. But if there's a better DAW at doing this...
 
I have never been able to cleverly deal with drum recording by myself, that isn't a pain in the ass.  9 armed tracks of drum audio, constantly at the keyboard or mouse hitting record, undoing takes and etc.  I never got past Home Studio 2 tho, so I never experienced any version of Sonar. 
 
So...I need to be able to loop sections and record several takes involving 9 or more tracks per, and be able to sift through them and pick the best performance without it being a labor intensive, confusing mess.  The ease of navigating in the DAW for capturing audio performances is the most important driver of my next DAW purchase, I think.

Check out layers and comping in Studio One...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg4d0mXRxvA
 
Take care,
h

That's interesting, but not what I'm talking about. 
 
I'm talking about during the tracking, navigating the DAW, recording drums on tracks 3 thru 11, say, a 45 second section looped so you can record take after take, listen to each take and all that.   That's 9 tracks of audio per take - loop that three times you've got 27 tracks of audio.  It gets complicated...
 
There has to be a DAW that does this all clever and stuff...

I thought the newer versions of Sonar did that pretty well with take lanes. You can record multiple tracks at once and loop it. It automatically creates a new take within the track. Then you can look through the take lanes on each track and select your favorites. Or is that not what you're talking about? 

entrelac
I thought the newer versions of Sonar did that pretty well with take lanes. You can record multiple tracks at once and loop it. It automatically creates a new take within the track. Then you can look through the take lanes on each track and select your favorites. Or is that not what you're talking about? 

No that sounds exactly like what I'm talking about.  Take lanes...interesting idea.  Thanks.