Maarkr
Not to hijack this, but to clarify:  The Komplete S series is good to go as well as the Nektar LX series?  What about the new Panorama series?  The S series has some nice features but looks like its tied primarily to NI products.
I don't want to spend time f'n around with midi and other drivers/settings all day.  
I am also ignorant about a Sonar controller (no keyboard).  What is out there that integrates well with Sonar without dealing with excessive setup?  This may be better for me than the kb controller since I already have many keyboards.

I seriously doubt that there is any such thing as a controller that doesn't require at LEAST a full day or more like a week to set up and get used to.
 
 I recently purchased a Behringer X Touch for the insanely low price drop of $450 (US), and all channel strips and transport control work great right out of the box after setting it to run in MCU and setting it up in SONAR as a control surface and MIDI device, with one caveat, if your DAW of choice is Logic X you are good to go and nothing else needs to be done.
 But if you don't use Logic X, it requires a labeling template for in depth SONAR control or any other DAW of choice. It does NOT REQUIRE any MIDI mapping however, all buttons work (in SONAR), there're just not labeled correctly for SONAR.
 
 I wouldn't be at all surprised If some one here as already created a SONAR template for the X Touch, someone already has in the X Touch user forum here > https://forum.music-group...;highlight=touch+sonar .
 Or do what I did and look up "How to set up an X Touch in SONAR" on You Toob and got out my handy label maker.
 
Or you could purchase the closest thing to an X Touch, a Mackie DAW controller which comes with a "free" SONAR template for only $1100 (US)