BobF
 
The chord track feature made me curious enough to download the WF demo.  I've used T6 in some collabs, and it's not a bad DAW at all
 
Time to start the Waveform demo and see what the fuss is about.  :)
 

The chord track feature in Waveform appears to be limited to the pattern generator tracks.  They will follow the chord track. Here is a good overview of what you can do with the MIDI pattern and chord generator in Waveform.  So having a chord track that this can follow is a big improvement!  Very powerful feature for sketching out a chord progression and throwing in some MIDI chord tracks and a MIDI bassline.  It also has an arpeggiator pattern generator.
 
Tracktion Waveform Pattern Generator Tutorial

 
In Cubase, the chord track can be referenced by any MIDI track to follow chord events. From the Cubase Elements 9 manual:

Chord events are representations of chords that control or transpose playback on MIDI and instrument tracks.

Chord events alter the pitches of MIDI notes if their track is set up to follow the chord track.

 
The Waveform chord and pattern generator got me interested last year.  I did the W8 demo, as well as the Cubase Elements 9 demo.  I really liked the chord track in Cubase, but the DAW overall was not as intuitive.  Both were $99, and so I opted for Waveform.  But I did miss the chord track thingy in Cubase Elements, and so have considered maybe getting that too.
 
But it looks like the chord track that Tracktion just added to W9 has completed the pattern feature.  The pattern generator in W8 still seemed like a work in progress, without the ability to sync all the generated chord progressions in each of their tracks.  All they were able to do was follow the global track (project key).  So this is much better, you can now tell track by track which ones to follow the chord track.  Change the chord track, insert a change, and the patterns in the following tracks line up.
 
Waveform may not be for everyone.  But it is fun and intuitive, and I like it. 
 
From the Tracktion website:

Waveform is a rapidly evolving application specifically designed for the needs of modern music producers. Specializing in creative and inspirational workflows and avoiding features not explicitly needed allow the app to remain surprisingly fun and intuitive. While other apps try to appeal to broad user groups, for example film score, live sound, performance – we are laser focused on music production.

I was Sonar only until the announcement.

After considerations I went with Cubase Pro 9.5. Spent a modest amount of time learning it. Really like it a lot. Very stable and I appreciate its features.

However, I kept noticing people over and over again had super fan boy impressions of Studio One 3.5, and when the super low cross grade offer was announced I grabbed that as well. I then also went through (and continue to go through) the learning curve.

I am presently at this mindset:

1. I have discovered it's super easy to move whole songs or just tracks from one DAW to another.

2. I likely will now start most of my new songs in Cubase. I think the Chord features are top notch and will help me be extra creative. I also think the Sampler track is way cool, but that's another subject.

3. I expect once I've got my chord structure for the whole song in a good place in Cubase I'll transfer the song to Studio One for audio and FX/mixing and other VST instrument embellishments. So Studio One will be by main DAW. As it is very well thought out.

4. If I want to use any of my outboard sound modules or sounds, I'll mix down to a single track and bring it into Sonar. Everything is wired up for my external sound modules there. If I do use any, then I can just transfer the audio and midi back to Studio One for those tracks. I won't typically have that need, but I have that ready as needed. Studio One doesn't talk with the external stuff as I had set up with Sonar. Cubase could, but it's a lot of hassle to reset all that up when it works presently just fine in Sonar.

The question at the start is what did you move to? I think I moved to Cubase, Studio One, and in a pinch Sonar.
They all work fine together to move tracks for their strong suits. I'll arrange and mix in Studio One.

It's been a real eye opener for me to have Reaper on one screen and Sonar on the other and go back and forth between them in the course of transferring a huge project across. 118 tracks and I'm now at the stage of doing the automation. I have to be brutally honest - so far, I haven't found one single thing that I prefer in Sonar. And with all of the tracks loaded up and their FX in place, they're like two different DAW's. When I move focus to Sonar, there's a good 2 second delay before it's responsive, and oftentimes when I hit play I will get the spinning mouse pointer followed by the audio engine shutting down. When I move focus over to Reaper, it's responsive immediately and plays without a hitch every time. Sonar is starting to feel very clunky in comparison. Maybe you only really notice these differences in large projects, but for me it's like night and day. 
 
My biggest fear about transferring this project was the automation. I have a lot of sound design going on via the automation of effects like delay, filters and reverbs, and many of the tracks have between 5-10 lanes of automation. Drawing automation envelopes in Sonar is really troublesome. There are bugs and annoyances galore. Lots of unexpected behavior and fiddliness. Even though I did a lot of it, I was never fully happy about doing it. In preparation for doing it in Reaper, I watched one online video and read a couple of forum posts to answer further questions, and now I'm breezing through it. I use a lot of curves and stepped automation in my projects and doing it in Reaper is such a breeze by comparison, once you've learned a couple of keyboard modifiers (and now I find that tool HUD in Sonar a PITA!) Here's a snatch of some of the automation I've been tearing through with Reaper, just one part of one track (as you can see I have my work cut out). It's been an absolute joy so far, and I could never say that about drawing automation in Sonar. 
 

 
I don't know, everything just seems so much more accurate and precise in Reaper. Things work exactly how I'd expect them to. I think part of Sonar's problem was that it was a frustrating uphill slog for new users because of the way it's designed. I also think automation looks a hell of a lot nicer in Reaper than it does in Sonar, and the whole business of managing multiple automation lanes is so much more logical and convenient. Even selecting the parameters for automation - no more trawling back and forth through endless scrolling menus with the cursor keys looking for one parameter out of hundreds. With Reaper you get a nice big window listing them all and you simply check the ones you want. I can select every parameter I want to automate in one go and it gives me the lanes. I can choose which ones to show or hide from this screen, and I can size them all independently of each other.
 

 
And no more accidentally hitting the automation lane button and having a "default" volume automation tied to my fader that I have to delete - god how many times do I do that in Sonar, just in the course of one session, lol. So yeah, Reaper isn't the most modern looking DAW by default, but by golly it's designed so well and it just works. I love it. Honestly I am blown away by this software and how much it cost me. 
 
 

Reaper looks impressive. I went ahead and Upgraded to Waveform 9 after a fun time recording a song in Waveform 8. It does all I need, but Reaper is a program i'll look into later when I have a desire to learn a new DAW.

Learning Reaper requires a LOT of desire!

Now, it looks like Sonar might be back in the race and those of us that have been sitting tight with it, will have to keep sitting tight (until further notice).

And I think a lot of people that have spent quite some money lately on other DAWs (me included, with both Studio One 3 Professional and Cubase Pro 9.5 recently purchased) would be more than happy to return. The newly saved DAW missionaries exempted, of course.

emwhy
Learning Reaper requires a LOT of desire!

It really doesn't. After watching a few videos on YouTube I'm almost as fluent with it as I was in Sonar.

sharke

emwhy
Learning Reaper requires a LOT of desire!

It really doesn't. After watching a few videos on YouTube I'm almost as fluent with it as I was in Sonar.

The hardest thing to learn with Reaper is that you do NOT have to perform step "A" before performing step "B", and perform both steps "A" and "B" before proceeding to step "C".
 
Reaper is not procedural and linear like Sonar. It's more like Object Oriented Programming where you can start at "C" if you want to, and either later or never do "A" and "B".  I didn't really get what "Tool-less" mouse interface meant until I had been using it for a while and then loaded up Sonar one day to access an older project.

Great news about Sonar! I had Mixbus and Tracktion before Cakewalk tanked, so I'm happy to stick with these 3 into the future.