Not foolish at all, and YES you should absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt purchase it.
I'm not going into pointing fingers or making value judgements kinda stuff, but it has obviously worked for you so far, you've created a work flow that you understand with Cakewalk software, so lets just say shelling out a couple of hundred Franklin's for SONAR Pro today is very little interest on (or honest gratitude on) a long standing debt..
I'd be remiss, or actually down right dishonest to say I've never used cracked software or keygens to try out different DAWs and plugins. I have, and I'll also admit to happily purchasing any and all of them that I liked and found useful.
To do otherwise is nothing short of moral corruption which goes against the grain of my moral compass and sense of fairness in respect to entitlements.
How can anyone expect to make any real progress or turn their talents into making an honest living without give a fair share of the money to those who help us get there?
How can anyone expect anyone not to honor and not infringe on OUR copyrights when we infringe on theirs?
OK lets be honest and reasonable shall we, there is a freak'in enormous tidal wave of really excellent software choices for making music, which has created a virtual nuclear reaction of ad campaigns so freak'in fierce that many vendors not only lead their users to believe that their previous version is literal junk compared to their new and improved version, nobody else's products could ever be considered, and just to prove our point, we'll give you a free 30 day trial.. Blah, blah blah, which never proves to a anything more then a carrot on a stick in the long run..
To put it another way, I've been using Cakewalk for decades now, I'm extremely proficient with it, but I still don't know how use all it's plethora of various tools or even care to learn everything about how to use them because they aren't applicable to my work flow. But that doesn't mean I won't find the time or find these tools useful in the future.....
For me to sit down and actually learn how to fully "understand" and use all of SONAR's potential, I would have any time left to make music.
That being said, out of all the DAW environments I've actually worked and collaborated in with seasoned "power users" through the years, I feel confident in the realization that NONE OF THEM covers all the bases like SONAR does, and or does them as well.
And in that respect, SONAR DOESN'T NEED ANY FURTHER DEVELOPEMENT in the near future! Not at least until all others can catch up. ;-p
For instance, as a seasoned user of both DAW's, on one hand, I would have to give the latest Pro Tools 12 version a very high rating, an honest "A" rating for sure, it finally matured into the wonderful world of bodacious x64 power, it really is quite a jaw dropping and inspiring development.
One I'm very fond of and remembering experiencing first hand when the bakers of Cakewalk released SONAR 6 Producer a few years, or decade(?) back..
So a HUGE CONGRATS for AVID catching up to SONAR 6 Producer (you have every reason to be proud), perhaps ya'all will catch up to SONAR 8.5 Producer with PT v13.
And we got a VERY bodacious and innovative Dente/Ethernet interfacing power of Steinberg and Yamaha marriage going on here with NUAGE.
Solid and worthy contender for both the dying AVID Pro Tools HD and the now defunct Cakewalk Roland marriages.
Focusrite RedNet has already nailed AVID's coffin shut, Behringer and Presonus have both taken lead with an open source "let's try to support everybody and everything" extremely affordable Dente/Ethernet interfacing approach.
If there is one thing I'm certain of, as soon as it becomes affordable Dente/Ethernet interfacing will be the death nail all USB and Thunderbolt interfaces and before you know it we'll all forget recording latency issues ever existed.
Sorry ProCo, but we won't be needing your expensive BIG, heavy, bulky, hard to handle and manage 100' 16 channel low impedance snakes anymore, now that we can run 2x the channels thru a very inexpensive tiny Cat 6 Internet cable at 3x the distance.
And we can record a guitar part in the bed room, the vocals in the kitchen, and or the drums set up in the basement of the house next door at about 6 ms roundtrip latency directly into the DAW of your choice over
WiFi and everyone who has a smartphone has control of their own monitor mix, completely independent of the DAW or FOH (front of house) mix.
Well,
you will if you CONTINUE to UPGRADE & PAY FOR IT!Thank you Behringer, thank you Presonus. :o) And above all else, thank you Cakewalk for making it so easy and customizable with so many choices to work in so many ways and different workflows, with so many killer high quality tools to choose from..
So to close, SONAR isn't dead, Gibson may just be limping a bit and needs to adjust to a crowd who's sense of entitlement of "how much can I get for free" and "how much can I make from it" mentality that gave them the limp in the first place..???...