it might be tempting to jump for some but with "mix" and track templates alone, Sonar would be hard to leave... actually, for a zillion reasons... but I feel your message, K... Please, bakers... focus on this. It can be an evolving thing... but let's get somewhere quicker than later.
Last time I demoes S2 I was NOT impressed; however, I did watch their S3 webcast and was impressed, although with a better thought out arrange window, scratch pad is really just a gimmick... for example, if I selected the parts of a chorus I like, pasted this to the end, then add new parts to it... it serves as a "scratch" and can be saved or inserted as desired.
I like the cubase system too but would love a "repitch the song as currently arranged" feature so I could do final independent editing, adding, deleting over the entire timeline and not merely jump... for example, in the second chorus I might want to add another guitar and several different voices, to build the song to a crescendo... can't do this with just a "jump" feature... render is needed for this...