It is the best I've seen, but that's just me. Any thoughts ?

I must admit to preferring the Cakewalk by Bandlab mixer panel but then that is what I am really used to. I find Pro Channel so very handy. Also setting up busses etc very simple in Cakewalk. When all the kaffuffle over the demise of Sonar occurred I purchased Reaper and spent the first few weeks trying to at least get the Master track to behave similarly to Sonar. But now I'm back to olde faithful Sonar under its new name.

I must admit to preferring the Cakewalk by Bandlab mixer panel but then that is what I am really used to. I find Pro Channel so very handy. Also setting up busses etc very simple in Cakewalk. When all the kaffuffle over the demise of Sonar occurred I purchased Reaper and spent the first few weeks trying to at least get the Master track to behave similarly to Sonar. But now I'm back to olde faithful Sonar under its new name.

Sure, why not?

 

what is it that makes it the best for you?

pwalpwal
what is it that makes it the best for you?

I really like the features and visual style of the Pro channel. Particularly the Console emulation and Tube feature.

I think if you were to ask a Pro Tools fan the answer would be Pro Tools is better, ask an Ableton fan the answer would be Ableton is better. I believe that what you can drive the way you want would be the best in your eyes. I like Cakewalk's mixer but I'm more familiar with it than any other but most from what I have seen are similar. What Sonar has to set it apart is the Pro Channel but then one can do similar in other products with a bit of work.

I have to admit that since switching to Reaper I vastly prefer its mixing console. The reason being is that it's just so much more configurable. There are so many different layouts and sizes for the channel strips, and you can configure them separately on a track by track basis. So if you want to, for example, keep all of your drum strips narrow, and all the others wide, you can do that. And of course folders in the console, something Sonar could really do with. I also like how Reaper has a separate "monitoring FX" chain between the master bus and the outputs, so you can throw all of your ARC2 and Sonarworks type stuff in there without having to worry about turning it off for the export, and without having to create a new bus to route the master through like you do in Sonar to achieve a similar effect. Hope Cakewalk takes on a few of these ideas in the future. 

I think  it is very subjective.  I certainly prefer cakewalk mixer to most mixer views, but for pure straightforwardness, hard to beat Harrison.  I think customization is somewhat overrated.  Obviously it's not always the case, but most of the people I know that delve deep into customization spend more time playing with colors and layouts than actually making music. The most productive people I know make a few minor changes that adress core functionality and then leave it alone.

What I do not like is that it does not retain the layout with a saved projects. 
If I have 20 tracks I have to go to each one and make it Narrow so I can see them all on my second monitor. 
Save screenset,,, save lens... close and open they are all big again and the Buss pane is overlapping again. Huge time suck. 
 
Possibly I'm missing something which is typical for Sonar as many good features can allude you because they are not very obvious. But the way I see it the Console is not very customizable. 
 
I've played with a few other DAW's including Cubase and MIx Bus and I really don't see a big difference. I only open it in the final mixdown stage.