FWIW I am trying out Reaper because:
 
1) Active and helpful forum (haven't actually posted yet because I keep finding answers to my questions before posting). For me, the forum was the best part of using Sonar. That is, I never felt stuck because of the many helpful people here. Looking forward to that on the Reaper forum.
2) Kenny Gioia videos are very well done. There are are other good videos too but his are so well organized and to the point
3) For basic setup, recording and mixing of audio, I felt I was up an running very quickly. BTW, I have not read the manual yet. I have watched a lot of videos though :-)

the_user_formally_known_as_glennbo
Well I couldn't resist creating a NEW account here. My original one got nuked because of my singing the praises of REAPER!
 
I jumped ship and became an avid REAPER user after Sonar 5, which I beta tested for. In my most honest opinion, REAPER blows pretty much any other DAW software to pieces, and I ain't saying that so other folks will validate me buying it!
 
Some things I *LOVE* about it are:
 
Variable speed control that works just like a reel-to-reel. Slow the song down, and hit that highest note without cracking your voice or going falsetto.
 
A track is a track is a track.  There is no such thing as an instrument track or an audio track. Any track can record midi or audio, and if you want to be obtuse, you could even record both on one track. You can do crazy stuff like have multiple audio clips, all at different sample rates and bit depths, and it will let you get away with it.
 
More cool things it does outside the box are, a single track can have up to 64 audio pipelines. What that does for you is let you route the audio that you will hear, vs audio that will be used for side chain functions, or other totally bizarre stuff.
 
You can stack multiple softsynths into the FX bin and they ALL play so if you want to create a huge and complex instrument, it's a piece of CAKE.
 
The routing capabilities are farther out than you can probably think, and to lace up routing from one thing to another, you simply drag from the send of one thing to the receive of another, and again with more individual pipelines than you'll ever think of using.
 
The audio engine is probably the most efficient one on the planet, and Justin even compiles parts of it with older, non-bloated Borland C++ to achieve the least CPU hit imaginable. 
 
You can copy and paste envelopes, and the envelopes ACTUALLY WORK, unlike some other DAW software!!!
 
You can scale the entire UI up or down (every element) to sit on your screen well. I have an older net book and used to record my band playing live with it, and with it's limited screen res, I scaled REAPER down to 90%.
 
A track folder by default is also a bus, which I use extensively for grouping vocals, drums, and other things. You can put folders into other folders and create a complex hierarchies. You can also drag-drop around a folder, if you want to bypass the folder as a sub, but I can't imagine why you would want to do that.
 
In closing I will say that if you try REAPER, you are going to be intimidated, and that it has a STEEP learning curve, but that is to be expected with a piece of software that has almost infinite possibilities. Don't think that you can spend an hour or two with it, and make and educated decision about it. If you try it, I STRONGLY suggest you get on the forum and ASK questions, as well as watch some of the many videos there are for it.
 
Sorry to hear that you guys ship has abandoned you.  :-/
 
Peace
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Glennbo                      

I have to say, this sounds promising. The lack of ARA integration is a shame, but if I need to use Melodyne I can just launch the standalone version and edit the tracks in that. I am seriously considering taking the plunge and purchasing a licence for Reaper. I will definitely download the demo and give it a try. 
 

maximumpowerI have not read the manual yet. I have watched a lot of videos though :-)

I've been using REAPER for going on ten years this coming March, and have never really read the manual. I've downloaded versions of it many times, just to scan for some key word, like just recently I saw on the forum some folks talking about VCA groups, so I grabbed another updated copy of the manual and looked that one "new to me" function up. Beyond that kind of use with the manual, the user group has always got me up and running with any questions or issues I might have.

kevmsmith81
I have to say, this sounds promising. The lack of ARA integration is a shame, but if I need to use Melodyne I can just launch the standalone version and edit the tracks in that. I am seriously considering taking the plunge and purchasing a licence for Reaper. I will definitely download the demo and give it a try.

REAPER devs have announced that ARA support is coming, and they actually follow through when they make announcements. It doesn't have it yet, but it most definitely will, and using Melodyne as one of the two external editors you can setup in REAPER will let you use it, until it's implemented with ARA.  Here's the announcement.
 
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=200297

With all the praise coming from people who know what they're talking about, I can't help but think that Reaper would be a good choice going forward for me as well.
 
I'm no Sonar expert and know nothing about Reaper.  I've read most of what has been said here on the alternatives, but could someone give us a idea of the main things we'd lose of Sonar by switching to Reaper ?  (apart from ARA for the moment).
 
The 60$ price tag is way below the competition's regular price.  Why ?  Put another way, if Reaper is so great and so cheap, why consider Studio 1, Cubase, etc. at all ?
 
 (I really liked Sonar's 3d reality look, but that Imperial theme is in another universe)
 

Paul P
The 60$ price tag is way below the competition's regular price.  Why ?  Put another way, if Reaper is so great and so cheap, why consider Studio 1, Cubase, etc. at all ?

Studio 1, Samplidute, etc. ... - $150. But exclude the price of all bundled with them softsynth and most FXes. Then check "education" like prices ($60 for Reaper is reduces prices). Do you still think that Reaper is "so cheap", when compared with other "core" DAWs?

Paul P
With all the praise coming from people who know what they're talking about, I can't help but think that Reaper would be a good choice going forward for me as well.
 
I'm no Sonar expert and know nothing about Reaper.  I've read most of what has been said here on the alternatives, but could someone give us a idea of the main things we'd lose of Sonar by switching to Reaper ?  (apart from ARA for the moment).
 
The 60$ price tag is way below the competition's regular price.  Why ?  Put another way, if Reaper is so great and so cheap, why consider Studio 1, Cubase, etc. at all ?
 
 (I really liked Sonar's 3d reality look, but that Imperial theme is in another universe)
 

The biggest difference I can see between Reaper and the rest is in the bundled plugins. Reaper doesn't have the level of plugins included with others from what I can see (many of which are bundled with some version of Melodyne for example). This is not to say Reaper's bundled plugins are bad though. I downloaded the pack they have available for free and they seemed pretty good. 

There are a few reasons that REAPER is only $60.  One of them is the obvious one. They only include staple plugins, and nothing at all 3rd party. Initially I thought the included plugins were basic, because well, they *look* pretty basic, but I kept reading people raving about them in the REAPER forum, so I eventually gave them a fair evaluation. The EQ with spectrum display was the first one I really started using on a regular basis, but as time went by I found that the compressor, multi-band compressor, gate, convolution reverb and others were much higher quality than their deceptive look would have you believe.
 
A second reason that REAPER is so inexpensive is that the company Cockos who makes it, do no advertising, have no marketing department coming up with cool names for things like "Blast Off 64". The names their plugins get are lame and boring, like ReaComp and ReaEQ. Nobody got a big paycheck coming up with those names! Basically, their overhead costs are extremely low, so they can stay in business without charging more for their software.
 
I know there have been some folks on the main Sonar forum who have claimed that Cockos can do what they do because the founder, "Justin Frankel" is a sooper millionaire from back when he wrote "Winamp" and it became wildly popular, finally selling it to AOL for millions of dollars, but that really isn't the case. When Justin first had Winamp out, it was based on the very same sales model. Download it, use it, pay a very small fee to keep using it, although it won't quit working even if you don't, but will tell you that you really should pay for it. That model of fair pricing rapidly turned Winamp's modest $10 donation fee for a legit license into a $10,000 per month income for him. REAPER is based on that very same fair price model. If you are using the software in a professional environment AND grossing $20,000 or more per year, then REAPER is $250, but if you are grossing less than $20,000 per year, even if you use it in a professional environment, then you only have to pay $60 for a legit license, just like someone using it totally for their own enjoyment.
 
The last reason that REAPER is only $60 (or $250 if commercial license) is that Justin wants to get the software in as many people's hands as possible, not because he wants to make a killing in profits, but because he wants the world to have high quality software in which people can create music with. He doesn't need the money, but does have some payroll to meet with guys like Schwa, so his goal is to make REAPER sustainable, but not compromised by profit goals. He uses the software himself and sometimes posts bizarre things you can do with it, that you would never think a DAW could do, and both he and Schwa are very hands on with the forum and the general direction of REAPER.
 
The company mission statement pretty much sums it up.  https://www.cockos.com/index.php
 

I still use Winamp 2.

kitekrazy1
I still use Winamp 2.

So do I!
 
I kept the last version made by Justin/Nullsoft before AOL got their grubby little hands on it.   <g>
 
I use it for most stereo audio file formats, and still love how I can run it docked unobtrusively as a thin bar to the top right corner of  Windows, and still have enough controls visible and clickable to run it.