rd2rk
Anderton
I think you'll find Friday's Tip of the Week #159 very helpful. It's also included with other Matrix view and loop tips in The Huge Book of Cakewalk by BandLab Tips so if you have the book, check out page 319.
Thanks Craig, but way more trouble than I care to get into! LIVE makes it stupid easy to get a groove on, they're still the right tool for that (Electronica) job.
I think if you go through the steps, you'll find it's not that complicated. A lot of it is about setup, and once you save the project as a template, you don't have to do that setup again.
That said, Ableton Live is a brilliant program and tailor-made for loop-based and groove music. No other program is as strong in its space. But, if someone can't afford Live, CbB can do a lot more than it might appear on the surface (e.g., pulling in slices from AudioSnap, as mentioned in the tip.
Of course Azslow is right, you won't be able to use a Live controller with Sonar/CbB the same way you can with Live. However I can vouch for the usefulness/cleverness of his utilities. They've been able to make controllers do things that (in theory) the controllers couldn't do.