Reaper is an awsome DAW "PERIOD" License $60

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                      

In my 'panic', I purchased the $60 Reaper just to see how it felt.  After about about an hour f***ing with it, I decided that it probably wouldn't be much of an improvement on Mixcraft.  Just looking at the interface, I realized that I would need to RTFM.  For me, that is a no-starter.  I wasn't even able to produce the DAW equivalent of "Hello world" in that time.

Reaper is well worth the initial effort getting your head around it.