I don't know why because I have never even looked at it, but when I was at Summer NAMM in Nashville, Presonus Studio One was getting a lot of buzz.

tonyzub999
I don't know why because I have never even looked at it, but when I was at Summer NAMM in Nashville, Presonus Studio One was getting a lot of buzz.

It is a good full-function DAW.  I don't feel I am as productive with StudioOne as I am with SONAR, and I feel like I get a better quality result with SONAR.  But i vividly remember my initial experience on StudioOne.  While it has its own quirks, I had a feeling that most of it made good sense.  It was more intuitive than most.
 
It looked more "polished" and less "techie".  As such, more of the NAMM attendees might have found StudioOne accessible.
 
The best example of this is probably the mastering mode.  There is nothing in the StudioOne mastering mode that you cannot accomplish in SONAR.  But it makes the process comfortable, coherent, and easy for a person who doesn't do that every day.

I don't know about the article and its ranking methods or accuracy, but it is true that Sonar/Cakewalk is nowhere near as popular as it should be. I remember the days when Cakewalk and Cubase were the big names in midi music software. When looking at software and hardware when they list DAW compatibility, I actually get excited when I see Sonar listed. That doesn't seem to happen often. I am not sure what has happened in the past for Cakewalk/Sonar to lack the recognition it deserves. Cakewalk has been completely overtaken in popularity by new DAWs. Maybe it is a lack of funding at crucial moments in the past or a lack of meaningful marketing. I know that it has had a bit of an unfair reputation as a non-pro DAW for bedroom music enthusiasts in the past. I do get the feeling, however, that more recently it is just starting to be taken a little bit more seriously. Either way, Sonar is my favourite DAW and has been for many years.

Leee
I googled "Best Daw Software for 2017" and the second choice was from ehomerecordingstudio dot com.  And Sonar was ranked as #2.  Even though the writer of the article wrote some negative comments overall, mostly because Sonar was not available as a cross-platform DAW (Mac and PC).  But just the fact that this site listed it as #2 and ProTools as #10, tells you that you'll never get the same ranking repeated by any polls, reviews, or "professional" opinion rankings.  And even though this site wrote mostly negative things about Sonar, it sill showed up as #2, just behind Presonus Studio One 3.

Also browsing various Google results, Sonar seems to show up a lot in the top ten, sometimes #5, sometimes #3.  But it's up there and it's a contender in the professional world of DAW software.  The rest comes down to personal taste and workflow.

https://ehomerecordingstu.o.com/best-daw-software/

That is "best" vs "most popular" which are two different things.

In my real world experience I hardly ever encounter anyone using Sonar honestly.  I didn't really think it was a big secret or mystery that Sonar wasn't exactly the most popular DAW out there.  Although it's a great program, it does seem to get overlooked for various reasons.  It's a shame b/c I don't think a lot of people who skip over it really realize how capable it is based on conversations I've had with various people who use other DAWs.

bladetragic
Although it's a great program, it does seem to get overlooked for various reasons.  It's a shame b/c I don't think a lot of people who skip over it really realize how capable it is

Reflecting back on the conversation I mentioned above with the music store manager, his reaction suggested to me his impression was tat SONAR was low quality and/or buggy.  That probably was the reputation around the X1 days.  He was totally unaware that Cakewalk has been doing monthly releases.  This is a story that the market really needs to hear.  It really is quite remarkable.
 
Some people here were complaining last week because the 8th major release of the product this year will be released early in the 9th month.  What other DAW has had this kind of enhancement progress?

In terms of actual professional studios that do major label work #9 seems a bit low but thats only because there are probably only a handful that really matter anyway...ProTools, Logic, some legacy stuff that is hardware dependent and then the misc., DAW's that are artist or producer favorites...in the grand scheme of things the software makes very little difference and the popularity of said software makes even less, but it is rare for me to demo gear in a professional studio that is using Sonar...happens maybe 1 in 10 times and it seems to be engineer level preference when it does happen...but what difference does it make?

tonyzub999
Maybe I am a little late to this topic but the Audio Skills website ran a poll regarding DAW popularity and Sonar ranked #9 overall. I was surprised how low they scored. Even more interesting was they didn't rank very high even on the Windows platform. So I have a couple questions. 1. What do you think about this? 2. Where does Sonar rank overall? They could have had a small sample which could have skewed the results. Has there been a larger poll taken somewhere? I guess I always thought Sonar was one of the highest ranked DAWS on Windows.

I never believe a poll. I seem to recall a poll that pretty much guaranteed that Hillary Clinton would win the election.

Online polls are useless. They don't reflect reality. As an example I searched polls for the top 10 violins. The first three were cheap student instruments. 
Any poll I've ever seen for daws has been the same or worse. Statements from those who go around to various larger studios and see PT or Logic in use are also inaccurate because I believe more sales come from the small studio owner. I believe we are probably the target audience and as such, the less expensive programs probably sell better than Platinum. 
People are now conditioned to shop online, especially for software, so I see no liability in marketing to those who might be looking for a daw software program. I don't see that group going to Walmart for software.I go to other forums and do my best to get the word out about Sonar. I would suggest this is one of the better ways. Maybe put a question mark in someone's brain who has never heard of it...oh and mention it's free to download and try.
 
Lots of users have a very skewed view of Sonar and that needs to be set straight.

These polls are such nonsense.
 
To illustrate I would like everyone on this forum thread to vote 4 their fav DAW. Let's see which wins.
 
Let me start - SONAR
 
So far 100% of those polled prefer SONAR.
 
Cheers