I won't lie, I was pretty ticked when I heard Gibson was shutting down Cakewalk. I'm a software dev so I get it. Nonetheless, Cakewalk has been my primary DAW since 1988. I hope another company picks up the rights and the continues the dev work. I really don't want to invest in another DAW anytime soon.

A lot of us are in the same boat but I personally found switching to a new DAW much less painless than I first thought.

Download some demo's, have a play, see what you think.

Have a look in the software forum... Plenty of great advice in there.

Cheers

andy

I'm finding it quite painful and realising what a great DAW SONAR really is. 
 

Studio One 3.5 is rock solid here. It's been less than a month and I had a full session a week ago with no problems. I'm still learning new things but I must admit I'm a believer now of all the hype.

jeff oliver
Studio One 3.5 is rock solid here. It's been less than a month and I had a full session a week ago with no problems. I'm still learning new things but I must admit I'm a believer now of all the hype.

I think Studio One is closer to SONAR than Cubase is, it feels more like home than Cubase because it is closer to the Skylight interface.
 
Studio One feels lean, I just miss the prochannel.
 
 
*bangs head against the wall for a bit. 
 

 I jumped to Cubase and finding there are a lot of pluses to doing so.  Sonar is easier to set up screens and record midi/audio, so composing for me is just easier/better in Sonar.  But after that, Cubase just is head shoulders more advanced especially if you score to picture. Latency is not an issue, Notation is way farther ahead, you can move video around, Cubase's version or ProChannel opens all the channels at once (not just the one channel), tempo is handled much better and Variaudio is like having an advanced version of Melodyne and Audio Snap all rolled into one (the only drawback is no polyphonic auto tuning).
 
After what Gibson did and seeing all the better features in Cubase I am kicking myself for being such a Sonar "fanboy".  I Should have jumped ship long ago.   

The thing is this community is really great.  There is nothing like the Sonar Forum for great advise and people.  This is why I stayed, I guess.  This is where I feel like I'm losing an old friend also.

For me I see no reason at all to move to another DAW.
Sonar does everything I want and need it too and a lot more than that even.
 

Check out Reaper as well, before making a final decision.  While everyone has different requirements in a DAW, Reaper does fill a lot of needs.

I spent hours using sonar today.