Anderton
IMO SONAR has reached the point where its feature set is very close to "all you need." Of course there are still holes, like ripple editing and room for MIDI improvement, and there are always things one could want. But if you look over the updates for the past several months, it seems Cakewalk is doing the software equivalent of "renovating" rooms in a mansion.

 

abacab
I think that the core of Sonar is very close to "all you need", at least as a recording studio.
 
There are a few areas that seem to be better addressed by other products. Such as notation based and pattern based composition. 
 

 
Midi improvement in Sonar is long overdue in my opinion.  
 
 

Steev
Thanks Starise, but no need to apologize as no offense was taken. And yes indeed I believe SONAR has WAY more then enough to suit anyone's personal workflow needs from capturing live musicians and tracking audio/MIDI performances, to loop and groove based genre specific sequence composition and everything in between to the point of actually offering way too much for any one user too even get a grip on all of it.
 Which I might add is utterly impractical if not impossible to do with a 30 day free trial
 
 I'd go as far as to say that I haven't found much or anything that couldn't be done in SONAR, I just had to go about doing it differently.
 And this I believe was the OP's main problem, he expected SONAR to have silver bullets included to make it behave the way HE wanted it to, with all the controls, buttons, and levers in all the same places which was exactly like FL.
 Most likely one of those who say stuff like; "HELP FILES! I don't needs no stink'in Help Files.
 
Now I was never one who was even comfortable working with prerecord rhythm patterns 
 It didn't take me long to figure out a MUCH easier and smoother way to work with ACID loops in SONAR then it is with ACID Pro, and combining and using Cakewalk's MIDI Groove Clips makes SONAR seem like ACID on STERIODS with a turbo charged engine with overhead cam and glass packs.
 What typically takes hours to arrange and edit in ACID takes minutes to do in SONAR, and you can easily shave off many more minutes from that just with SONAR's ProChannel.
 I tried to convince many of my ACID/artist/collaborators who were blown away with the speed, efficiency, and superior sound quality I was achieving to try the 30 day SONAR trial, and I would not only walk them through it, I offered a custom mixed SONAR project of a song we were already collaborating on in ACID Pro.
 Only 2 out of 10 jumped on the offer, no one else would even budge and only one purchased SONAR, and eventually went back to using ACID after about a year because he wasn't happy at all with support, and because of overly complicated patching and routing issues he had to go though every time he added a track.
 
 A problem which still exists today, even with all the offered templates, all of which miss the mark on basic I/O assignments, though most of us here most likely are so used to it we don't really notice it anymore.
 
Now I know the bakers are all so busy what with getting SONAR to run right on a Mac and all, but............. Ummm..... Well, I don't mean to be disrespectful but my money says that that will prove to be an enormous waste of time and money.
 Does anyone, and I mean ANYONE really believe that they can win over and change the minds of a Pro Tools or Logic Pro user to jump ship?
 Does anyone, and I mean ANYONE really believe Apple will even continue making and developing desktop or even laptop computers long enough for Cakewalk to even attract new Mac Head users that don't automatically [and correctly] assume that Pro Tools or Logic Pro are the ONLY true professional choices for a most powerful, smooth, and reliable workflow?
 
Oh BTW, Logic Pro is the SONAR of the Mac Head World, and it is a VERY SERIOUSLY SERIOUS CONTENDER!
 It is also the hands down winner of the lowest latency with Focusrite Scarlett Gen 2 interfaces. An astonishing 1.7 ms @ 24/96 ROUNDTRIP with USB 2 which easily supports routing and running VST audio plugins as channel inserts or Aux. in real time audio recording with undetectable latency.
 2x-3x lower latency then I register with SONAR which would still be low enough to be great IF SONAR supported running VST audio plugins in real time, which it doesn't.
 
 It's things like these we notice when and if we ever leave the SONAR Bubble.
 
 Sorry boyz and girlz, as much as I love SONAR, it is not the best, nor will it ever be offering it to Mac Heads that been picking on it for the past 20 years or so. LoL
 

1.7ms latency @ 96khz sample rate is not astonishing. With good hardware and drivers Sonar is equally capable.

When you have a set buffer size and increase your sample rate, the natural outcome is for the latency to come down. But as with all things there are trade offs. With increased sample rate and lower latency comes a greater CPU overhead along with a greater data throughput that needs to be written to and read from the discs. These capabilities are more down to hardware and drivers than solely the DAW.

LoL Starize, customer support isn't one of my strong points either.
Yes I'm aware Magix took over Sony Creative Software, that really got my attention when they decided discontinue and delete the ACID Planet ProZone layer, because they was only a couple hundred of us using it.
 I wish I knew they were going to do that, as I would have most certainly moved everything I had posted there over the past 10 years or so to another website
 They did give us a $40 refund towards our next Magix software purchase, and that also made me aware that they really UPed the pricing, and actually make you go through hoops to even find out how to upgrade, which is all very curiously missing from the Magix Software Products website and not even listed in the first several pages of support and FAQs.
 It took me a half an hour to find my Sony Products download page to get a VP 14 trial download after logging into my account directly from Vegas Pro 11 Help Menu, which took me almost back to where I started (only being logged into my account) and then had to go through a series of FAQ's with links to find a link to email them my Vegas Pro 11 serial number to request a special upgrade offer, which is $100 more then what SCS used to charge, which is now $250 which I kind of find ridiculous because they've done nothing to improve it. It still downloads a SONY Vegas Pro brand as does all other SCS software, and the $40 refund towards our next Magix software purchase can't be used towards the upgrade.
 The only real difference between v11 and v14 is a little more sheen on it's grill, and support for more 4K rendering codecs. Nothing that can't be accomplished with rendering any HD codec from any version of Vegas and importing it into Nero Platinum.
 And forget about a Vegas user forum on Magix, especially if you are accustomed to the point of being spoiled with the Cakewalk User Forum, Vegas User forum never actually really existed in this capacity, other then a short run in ACID Planet Community Forums, which died out years ago due to the rather steep and complicated learning curve of video editing in Vegas is 180 degrees out of phase of the insanely easy learning curve of ACID software. So easy, you don't even have to know squat about playing or performing music, and you don't even have to know what a DAW is to begin creating some very catchy tunes and ideas simply by knowing how to use a Windows PC.
 What made me fall in love with ACID in the first place wasn't loop based composition, other then using drum loops for putting down  killer click tracks using loops created by Mick Fleetwood, it was because I add and stack tracks to them record track after track of audio tracks all day long and anywhere on my Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows 2000 on a 600 M/hz Pentium 3 with a whopping 96 gigs of RAM. 
 At the time ACID Pro 2 could do things the bakers at "12 Tones" could only dream of doing with Cakewalk Pro Audio, and import a stereo mix down of an ACID project into CPA 9, and it's ready for some SERIOUS MIDI MAGIC, and then import a stem mix into Pro Tools................ Mix, stir, bake, broil and or boil and repeat... :o)
 I know that may sound complicated to some, but believe me, it's so much easier, safer, and more accurate than using a grease pence and razor knife to slice up rusty strips of celluloid on an editing block and Scotch Taping a song back together..
 
Thunderbolt is excellent on Intel i7 based systems with Z87 chipsets, but kind of a crap shoot with AMD based systems with FX 990 chipsets.
 On my system using a Focusrite Clarett plugged into an ASUS Thunderbolt PCIe card, one day it would scream heavenly and flawlessly, the next day when I booted up my computer my BIOS would even recognize it and I'd have to walk through Hell and go through a Voodoo dance to get it up and running again.
 
However the Focusrite Scarlett Gen 2 series achieves near Thunderbolt ultra low latency through USB 2 on the same system, and hooks up seamlessly to my first gen Focusrite OctoPre with ADAT optical and Word Clock, and I can have a real nice trouble free day with insane amounts of connectivity with an added bonus of 16 Focusrite really delicious sounding Focusrite preamps.
I was also very PLEASED to notice an astonishingly life like amount of "air" and resemblance to an ISA preamp that SONAR's ProChannel gives the Scarlett by using the "N" Type module. Very much does what the "Air" control on Clarrett does and with slightly more control over coloring with the "N" Type module's Trim, Gain, and Tolerance.
 And why shouldn't it, the "N" obviously stands for Rupert, the father of Focusrite, Neve.
 As does "S" Type obviously stands for SSL as it adds that SSL warmth, but I'm not really sure what "A" Type is, except for adding a certain flavor of harshness which I find rather pleasant for some hard core saturated sounding Genres like death metal and old school punk, I'm thinking, that certain place where the power of "GERTH" trumps "Tone" every time for the truest sonic experiences of and for SLAM DANCING and HEAD BANG'in!
 

Interesting that the OP says paste doesn't snap to the grid. For about a year, paste has been missing the grid for me by anywhere from 3 to 30 ticks (in a 120/qrt setting), even when I paste special and select the time. Similarly, putting notes on the staff has the same issue. I've checked and rechecked settings. This is such an odd behavior that it struck me that someone else has something similar.

Hi Konrad - here is a post on considerations with snap to grid - maybe that will help you understand how to get it to do what you are needing:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Snap-to-grid-setting-not-working-m2440851.aspx
 
Bob Bone
 

Talk about "all over the place", this thread it it!
Got an issue? Throw in "I've had enough".
Just kidding, just kidding.

Or maybe not...
T

Well seeing as how this thread began in 2015 - why not.  If the OP is still here, then there is either a great success story in play, or the makings of a great country song.
 
Bob Bone
 

konradh
For about a year, paste has been missing the grid for me by anywhere from 3 to 30 ticks (in a 120/qrt setting), even when I paste special and select the time.

If you're clicking in an audio clip to set the Now time, I would guess this is due to having Snap to Zero Crossings enabled. But I can't imagine how using Paste Special could fail to paste at the specified time.
 
In lieu of disabling Snap to Zero Crossings, you can click in the timeline to snap the Now time to for pasting without being affected by the Zero Crossings option.

Konrad was using X1 but I think he's just in the process of catching up with the rest of us :)  
But I do agree snap to grid for me has always been quirky.
And I noticed it doesn't stick with lenses. I have to keep changing it back to my preferred 1/16 note value,, like a lot of defaults in Sonar 1 measure is pointless.