FWIW: I am using Sonar Producer X3e. The problem I referred to (rewinding to measure one after pause) still exists.

CakeAlexS
... well dead ones could be a logistical nightmare... (mind you they won't be going anywhere).

They're always late for rehearsal.

Due to the financial burdens on our country for the last several years, club owners found out they can cut their entertainment budget in half by replacing real musicians with one guy and what I call "Silicone Musicians". When I introduce myself at the venue I always take time to introduce myself and my laptop as Sidroe and the Silicone Band! It's good for a laugh here and there.
I think it is sad that old school musicians, as myself, have been hauled kicking and screaming in to the world of laptop performance. But I think it's even sadder to see less and less venues for ANY musicians to perform. If you do music for a hobby, GREAT! and more power to you. The guys like me who have done this for a living ALL of their lives find it harder to get consistent bookings now. I can safely say out of the numerous club and motel gigs around me, 90% of them are 1 guy, sitting on a stool with an acoustic under a 100 watt light bulb singing Midnite Rider! PLEASE! I'll take a bottle of Jack and a pistol at table 3!
There was a time in my life that live performance was my main income and the studio was just extra pocket money and fun. NOW the studio is my main income and live performance is very occasional.

Sidroe
Due to the financial burdens on our country for the last several years, club owners found out they can cut their entertainment budget in half by replacing real musicians with one guy and what I call "Silicone Musicians".
 ........... I can safely say out of the numerous club and motel gigs around me, 90% of them are 1 guy, sitting on a stool with an acoustic under a 100 watt light bulb singing Midnite Rider! PLEASE! I'll take a bottle of Jack and a pistol at table 3!

+1
It's the same around here. A four or five piece band can't make a decent living around here anymore. You have to be able to travel, in some cases a couple of hundred miles, to find any decent paying gigs. And of course those are in the larger cities so there are 100s of bands there vying for those same gigs which also tends to keep the money lower. To make enough money to make it worthwhile to play live, and by that I mean cover expenses and have a little pocket coin left over, you have to keep the overhead as low as possible.
It sucks but that's the world we live in nowadays.

[incredible temptation to get really political but I'll leave it at this]
 
Downsizing has a ripple effect. When the middle class shrinks, it affects everyone in the middle class. Real incomes have declined, so people who might have wanted to see a band can't afford it. So the person running the club has a drop in attendance, and the people who do come have fewer drinks. The club owner cuts back, which means that bands that used to make a living can't. So they don't go to movies any more, and the theater owners raise prices on concessions. People go out less, so they drive less, and the car dealers don't sell as many cars because people keep their cars longer, and the gas stations don't pump as much gas. It's a vicious spiral, because wealth is being transferred out of the middle class, and the middle class can't seem to be bothered to vote or be politically active. 
 
I'll shut up, sorry. Now, about playlists...I'm going to start checking out the subject to see what I find. In all my years of Sonar, I've never used playlists.

and just like here it (the wealth) just keeps going to the upper classes, who are, seemingly, impervious to anything and everything going on below them.

I applaud you, Craig! You cut right to the chase without using any internet rumor mill goodies that lead us to believe that Obama is behind the plot to make Skittles sugar free. LOL!
Honestly, though, that was a very concise observation without becoming politically correct. Thanks!

Anderton
[incredible temptation to get really political but I'll leave it at this]
 
Downsizing has a ripple effect. When the middle class shrinks, it affects everyone in the middle class. Real incomes have declined, so people who might have wanted to see a band can't afford it. So the person running the club has a drop in attendance, and the people who do come have fewer drinks. The club owner cuts back, which means that bands that used to make a living can't. So they don't go to movies any more, and the theater owners raise prices on concessions. People go out less, so they drive less, and the car dealers don't sell as many cars because people keep their cars longer, and the gas stations don't pump as much gas. It's a vicious spiral, because wealth is being transferred out of the middle class, and the middle class can't seem to be bothered to vote or be politically active. 
 

+1
Exactly! Hit the nail on the head.

I agree Craig. I won't go into it either because of the TOS, The other reason is nobody likes the truth. Denial rules the roost. Sad....

"There was a time in my life that live performance was my main income and the studio was just extra pocket money and fun. NOW the studio is my main income and live performance is very occasional."
 
Wow, sounds like my story too! 
But I wouldn't blame the economy per say, Here in BC they started really cracking down on drinking and driving back in the 80's and we point our fingers at that being the turning point. 
Bar owners became liable for anyone killed in a car crash after leaving their premises, roadside checks every weekend and sometimes weeknights etc. 
It's a good thing for society bad thing for musicians,,, I guess people need to drink to dance to live music.   
People started staying home, people stopped drinking in bars. 
It totally killed the old weekend party scene. 
Almost overnight bars were seeing less and less business and slowly stopped hiring bands and asking if we could downsize. It was not them I ever blamed.  They started hiring duos and singles. 
When I moved here in 1981 there were 5 Bars and 3 of them always had live bands. 
An interesting note: over time they all burned down and only 2 rebuilt from the ashes neither included a stage or dance floor in the new designs, they focus on dinning. 
 
As the music scene changed a few of use "technically minded" musicians quickly learned how to operate drum machines. We quickly moved on to sequencing and spent thousands of dollars on the gear. Some younger folks just don't realize how spoiled rotten we are now and the next one who complains about spending $200 on a audio interface gets monkey poo thrown at them! 
So now 3 decades latter I have the best sound and equipment ever, but there is nowhere to play. 
 
Good news is all those years of learning how to sequence and create killer backing tracks pays off when working with clients. I have a good reputation for taking original songs and helping the artist bring them to  life. One man bands are very handy folks in a studio! 
 
I still play at a few repeat events each year and I am also working on a acoustic duo. We are focusing on originals and hoping to bust into the summer festival gigs. The outdoor festivals might just be the last stronghold of live music. But we are reluctant to use our backing tracks which is mostly to have a bass player as that seem sort of tacky for festivals. 
 
I would love to see a well thought out playback system brought to the market. I don't see it happening as there's just not much of a market anymore. In the 90's there was a huge demand for live performance gear. Now It's all this DJ crap. ( no offence intended to all you DJ's)  
I tried Sonars Playlist but loading is slow on my older laptops I use if I used my original projects as is. So your faced with dumbing them down and in the end might as well export the mix. 
 
 Win Amp  works the best of all players I ever tried. 
It's the only one I know of that will stop after each song. Drag and drop playlist. Hot keys for my X Keys foot control. Sonar has those features but it's also boring to look at.