I think Craig summed it up rather nicely and that is you pick your DAW to suit your needs. And for me and my needs Studio One is the better choice. Not the better DAW remember.
 
It has superior midi timing especially with external hardware. Midi timing does not get effected when the audio side of the program is working hard. The gapless engine allows me to jump midi tracks on the fly and record into any parts on any tracks. (Sonar cannot do this BTW) It merges midi parts much better and easier.
 
Coming on here after using Sonar for thousands of hours and Studio One for five minutes is also a useless scenario as well. I have been using Studio One for thousands of hours and not Sonar so for me the GUI is nicer, much more intuitive and other DAW's feel clunky for me. Plus I know Studio One probably a thousand times better and deeper than any of you here and even the people who use it regularly as well. It has tons of features that most know nothing about. Sonar may be powerful but it is over complex at times and it is quite amazing how Studio One can perform the most complex of tasks with only one click. 
 
Latency, well on my Win 7 machine with an RME sound card (PCI based of course) I can run 32 samples easily and the latency is like 2-3 mS or so. I also have a Mac now and just bolted a Focusrite interface to it (painless BTW) and I am having like 1.2 mS latency over the thunderbolt port. So for me it is the fastest thing I have ever encountered. (Are any of you experiencing 1.2 mS BTW?) Playing virtual instruments is super fast now and just like the hardware. Latency has less to do with the DAW so much. There are other variables. It is pretty nice having the same program on the Mac too. 
 
The scratchpads are amazing as also the arrange ruler now. To be able to just drag entire sections of the song around is quite excellent. It all plays super well too. Better than looking at some list. Better to see it and hear it. Waveform changes height as you adjust clip gain. This is no brainer. This is fast.
 
Oh and I have never had a crash in all the time I have been using it. I push it hard for weeks on end, no crashes, super stable. I could leave it on, walk away from it and come back a week later and it will still play perfectly. I push it hard under pressure and it never falls over.  It has never crashed in front of a client. 
 
It is all about what you know. I go into a studio and watch masterful Pro Tools guys whip around the program in ways I could never do. I am sure many of you are very very skilled at using Sonar. I would be struggling.
 
This is not the place to find out out about Studio One either. The Presonus forum is, and once you spend time watching all the tutorials and videos on it you will start to see what I mean. I find here is the place to learn about Sonar features though and should I ever go back, here is where I will do the research.
 
You guys are lucky too having someone like Craig too really knowing Sonar well. He knows a lot about Sonar.  He is not the only one though, there are a few Craigs over on the Presonus forum who know Studio One as well as Craig knows Sonar so we have got some good people as well.
 
The main thing is all DAW's make great music and sound great and at the end of the day that is really the crux of the matter isn't it. It is how the music effects your listeners emotionally. They are not sitting back and wondering what DAW you used.
 
 

Jeff Evans
This is not the place to find out out about Studio One either.

Agreed, and that was never the intention of this thread. I was instead looking for first impressions. I do think it is useful to capture first impressions because in a competitive marketplace, that may be the only look that SONAR gets. I do feel that the SONAR community is a HUGE advantage, but that can also be a disadvantage if it gives the company false comfort that everything is OK as is.  There clearly are some rough areas with SONAR that would be off-putting to a new user, and I don't think any harm is done with an occasional reality check.
 
I also agree with the comment above about SO's listing of plug-ins. On one hand, there is some merit to their browser displaying the "face" of the plug-in and also exposing the available presets. But the overall impact is rather cluttered and disorganized. I think SONAR is a little better and more scalable, but I also think there is room for improvement in this part of SONAR's UI. Overall, my impression of the plug-ins in SO Pro is that they are OK, but not really great and completely inconsistent from one to the next.

Jeff Evans
Once again you are demonstrating lack of knowledge. Plugins can be organised in very clever ways

I am aware of that. I am talking about first impressions. It seems to me that SO has done a better job of first impressions. SONAR seems to make the first impression more complicated than it needs to be. IMHO it is better for a product to appear straghtforward out of the box, and to have the advanced stuff out of the way most of the time. But others may think a "power user" first impression is better.

I am glad Jeff confirmed the no crashing aspect. I have less than 100 hours with SOP and not even come close to threatening it, but my take means little without more evaluation. Jeff confirmed I have a lot more head room.

This topic is definitely an apples to oranges comparison in many regards, but dramatic features I know I will use a lot (arranger and scratch pads in particular) are "there today," as it were. In many respects the learning curve is the same as going from SONAR pre-X to SONAR X1 and beyond. Do, learn, adapt, and keep moving.

Having used Cakewalk solely for two decades the reality came up of the intense liability of such. Feature requests have become a joke, and the reality of folks literally being dead and gone before realized brings life back into sharp focus (where it should always be).

Life always throws interesting curves, and in December SOP and Lifetime Updates hit the same cost point. Faced with features in hand versus features in a bush, reality became apparent. Because of what I do, I will never reward (pay) someone to fix their problems (bugs) pressed onto me, pay them to test their product for them, nor pay them for "hope" (often the false pretense that something cool is coming). Even a one-time payment for such is out of bounds.

I remember the S1-3 update before the previous one was not usable for those who still have Melodyne 2.  

I've been with Cake since the beginning (Dos).
I play around with S1 (and Mixbus) on my laptop on the couch and some in the studio trying to learn them and gravitate away from Cake. I like S1. It feels like a Ferrari compared to the VW bus that is Sonar.
That said, there is a lot missing in S1 for me.

BobF
IMO, an export option to have the time honor a pair of markers would make things really simple.

+1 googleplex!

Once you set the boundary markers for export, you would never have to worry again (unless you wanted to change the boundary).

I've been wanting this for a long time :-)

Anderton

Sanderxpander
Craig, the thing is that you would normally set the beginning and ending markers once and forget about it, as soon as you have your song structure down anyway. Any project of mine might have anywhere between 5 to 15 exports between the initial sketch and the final mix going off to mastering. That's a lot of dragging on the timeline.

As I mentioned, in SONAR you can designate one marker as an end marker, and one click in the timeline selects the region to export, from the start to that marker. That's not a lot of dragging on the timeline. In fact it involves no dragging on the timeline.
 
I feel it's silly to get hung up on this kind of thing. SONAR has more powerful export options that are more complex. SOP has less powerful export options that less complex. It shouldn't be a revelation to anyone that different software designers make different tradeoffs in the programs they write.

True, and this is what I do. It's not a great big deal but it involves a repetition of steps that are identical but can be mistakenly executed, with no warning until you've completed the bounce.

With fixed "boundary markers", one need only set them up once and then every export will be identical with less steps. Isn't that what computers are good for?

pwalpwal
this thread should be in the software forum

You owe me a 43" display, qwerty keyboard and an FA06

pwalpwal
this thread should be in the software forum

Feel free to move it. You have my permission.

SOP gets a positive side glance from me just for being able to rotate the PRV 90 degrees. 

pwalpwal
the studio one gui fits on my laptop screen (1600x900)

So will a DOS/CMD window.

It would be great if Sonar added some features similar to the arranger track and scratch pads.
 
The remote app is pretty useful also.

pwalpwal
this thread should be in the software forum

looks like the genie in a bottle granted your wish pwal .