I still use a number of external MIDI devices and Sonar makes managing them pretty easy.
 
Looking at the alternatives it looks like Cubase would be as good and possibly better than Sonar but I'm struggling to see how good Studio One and MixCraft might be in comparison. According to the Sound Quest Web Site Cubase is also supported by Midi Quest for the management of patch lists a feature that I currently use with Sonar.
 
I installed a copy of Cubase 9.0 LE that I got free just to take a quick look and the number of devices that have definitions included looked nowhere near as good as the support Cakewalk provided through the .INS files.
 
I'm going to start looking at other demos tomorrow.
 
If anyone else has looked at this I would really appreciate any feedback.

I absolutely LOVE the mapping process/capability in Studio One.
 
 

BobF
I absolutely LOVE the mapping process/capability in Studio One.

Thanks Bob

anydmusic
I still use a number of external MIDI devices and Sonar makes managing them pretty easy.
 
Looking at the alternatives it looks like Cubase would be as good and possibly better than Sonar but I'm struggling to see how good Studio One and MixCraft might be in comparison.

I believe neither Studio One nor MixCraft handle Instrument Definitions (or anything equivalent).  Cubase (and SONAR) are the only DAWs that handle them in a robust way (e.g. with search capability across multiple banks).

I use a large hardware setup and Studio One handles all that very nicely. You can send bank and program changes to external instruments.
 
Instrument definitions are no big deal.  It does not worry me because if you are serious about using hardware synths you should know what patches you have loaded into any memory at any time. One should not in fact have the same sounds in your synths all the time.  You should be loading up many banks/sounds into the synth memories and auditioning and using sounds from any other stored banks you may have. e.g. My Roland JD800 only holds 64 patches but I have got like 3000 sounds for it. 
 
Midi timing is better than Sonar using external midi interface.  It is not linked to the audio side of the program either. It is independent and rock solid. It also records and plays back perfect live midi timing too. Internal midi resolution is special within Studio One and way higher than standard resolution.
 
Studio One can also be set up to loop while you might have a bunch of midi tracks engaged into record.  You can jump midi tracks the fly and drop new midi data into any track you land on.  All seamless and gapless.  Sonar cannot even do this.  It falls over when you try this.  For me this is a revelation.
 
Midi editing is way more advanced than many think. Watch the video on Groove 3 on Recording and Editing Midi and you will find all this out. Granted no event editor. You an always have Sonar on your system and load up a midi track if you need to see the event list too.

In Cubase like Sonar with Instrument Definitions called Patch Scripts. These Patch Scripts can list all the patches on an external synth and one can search for a patch and so on. They both work the same way. I have not seen a DAW other then Sonar and Cubase that have a similar ability. 

I've experimented with Reaper a bit. They use something called ReaControlMidi inserted on a track, which can load an instrument definition file. This file can be in the Reaper format (called reabank) or in Cakewalk format (ins). It works pretty well. There are a number of reabank files for various hardware synths available from the Reaper resources web site, or you can create your own. They are similar to Cakewalk's ins file in that they are just a simple text file.

John
In Cubase like Sonar with Instrument Definitions called Patch Scripts. These Patch Scripts can list all the patches on an external synth and one can search for a patch and so on. They both work the same way. I have not seen a DAW other then Sonar and Cubase that have a similar ability. 

 
Too much to hope for, I'm sure, but do you know if any genius has written an app to convert Instrument Definitions to Patch Scripts? You can't imagine how much that would help me!

I've been thinking about moving to Studio One, I still plan on using Splat for along time but want to at least learn another DAW well in case Sonar never gets saved or eventually dies. Has anyone had any luck with Studio One so far? I've been hearing its the best alternative to Sonar due to the similarity in interface and such. Is the audio mixing as strong as sonar? I noticed it does have Melodyne integrated like Sonar so that's nice.

I just load my cakewalk ins file for my Motif ES 6 into Reacontrol and it works fine.