I haven't even bother to download any demo of another DAW to try out. I'm continuing to use Sonar Professional full steam ahead.
So I was working on a Midi track for a Flute performance sound. Performance articulations were applied to the midi events and I was satisfied with it. But the Flute sounds from the various VSTi sample players at my disposal including SampleTank weren't what I desired. I needed to hear a rich breathy Flute sound. Then I turned my attention to the XGLite soundbank in my Yamaha PSR-E453 Keyboard. Proceeded to set up the Midi track in Sonar to send the data via USB cable to the keyboard's tone generator and to play the Flute in its soundbank. It turned out to be exactly what was desired. Then came the work of getting that Flute performance sound recorded into an audio track in Sonar. I could have run an audio cable from the keyboard's analog output to the Focusrite audio interface's analog input, but due to the various conversion processes, latency issues were bound to crop up. Fortunately, the keyboard can stream digital audio to the computer through the same USB cable that is sending midi data in the opposite direction all at the same time. To facilitate this bi-directional streaming of data and to get the Midi performance recorded into Sonar as digital audio, I had to switch the Device Driver from Focusrite to Yamaha/Steinberg, and lowered the Buffer size to 64 samples. Record armed the audio track that was setup to receive audio and hit record. The Flute performance from the midi track was recorded as digital audio without any pops and clicks. Zoomed in and the audio had lined up in time relative to the Midi events perfectly. Nice.