1- Big Fish is Loops, I don't use loops, I'm a musician and I make my own songs or use downloaded midi files which I edit to my taste. Loops are for people who are not musicians so they can build a song piece by piece. I think it's what is used in electronic and Hip hop. So if you are a traditional player you probably will never use them.
If any use there might be drum lops I guess, but in the time it would take to dig through all that stuff I can have 3 songs finished :)
Rapture is a powerful player that uses Samples to play sounds and just about every instrument is in there.
This is why I say you will want to replace the old sounds as those are synthetic low resolution sounds. Nobody wants to listen to those anymore.
We now use Sample libraries as those are real instruments and most sound very good.
2-Not from the sounds of what you are doing. If your only working with MIDI HS has everything you need. The core program is the same in all versions. I would not send the $499 on Sonar as it's future is uncertain.