I think that most of us have developed tactics that have more or less compensated for the lack of VCAs in SONAR and most of the DAWs out there. Since my initial post, I had a user of VCAs in consoles speak of the benefit of a single VCAS fader. I understand it a bit more now and I see how I have used a combination of groups and busses to do something along the,same line.

So, would I like VCAs now if I had thm? Probably, yes. Am I going to spend $229.00 to get that feature? Likely, not. That said, there are some pretty powerful features and improvements that come with the new version of Samplitude but nothing that is compelling me to pay that high a price for the upgrade.

SuperG
VCA mixers are known to last longer than non- VCA mixers. Because the VCA controls the audio level instead of the physical fader, decay of the fader mechanism over time does not cause a degradation in audio quality.

 
Damn, so my SONAR faders are going to wear out faster than the ones in other DAWs! I'll try not to adjust them too much, so maybe they'll last longer. 

 

Rain
A very quick exemple. Let's say you have 3 faders grouped - the first two are at -3db and the third one is at -5 db.
 
Push the 3rd one all the way up to 0db. The others will simply reach 0db a bit earlier and stay there. Once you pull back that third fader, their initial "relative"  settings will be lost - the relation becomes absolute... At least in PT and Logic. I can't say for Sonar.

SONAR will not only remember the relative settings for faders regardless of whether you top them or bottom them out, it will do the same with automation envelopes. But where SONAR really offers an advantage is the custom grouping option where you can set arbitrary limits for faders within a group.
 
For example suppose you have faders at -10 for tambourine, -4 for drums, and -6 for overheads. You group them together, but when you push the -4 and -6 up, regardless of how far they go you don't want the tambourine to go over -8. Custom groups can do that. You can also preserve a linear or ratiometric relationship with faders. 
 
I'm still not seeing any application where VCA grouping can do something SONAR can't do and that I would find beneficial. It would save some steps if you could assign a group to a fader in a group, but I can do that with buses if it's essential.

Anderton

Rain
A very quick exemple. Let's say you have 3 faders grouped - the first two are at -3db and the third one is at -5 db.
 
Push the 3rd one all the way up to 0db. The others will simply reach 0db a bit earlier and stay there. Once you pull back that third fader, their initial "relative"  settings will be lost - the relation becomes absolute... At least in PT and Logic. I can't say for Sonar.

SONAR will not only remember the relative settings for faders regardless of whether you top them or bottom them out, it will do the same with automation envelopes. But where SONAR really offers an advantage is the custom grouping option where you can set arbitrary limits for faders within a group.
 
For example suppose you have faders at -10 for tambourine, -4 for drums, and -6 for overheads. You group them together, but when you push the -4 and -6 up, regardless of how far they go you don't want the tambourine to go over -8. Custom groups can do that. You can also preserve a linear or ratiometric relationship with faders. 
 
I'm still not seeing any application where VCA grouping can do something SONAR can't do and that I would find beneficial. It would save some steps if you could assign a group to a fader in a group, but I can do that with buses if it's essential.

Looks like it's even less of an issue in Sonar land, then. :) I remember that even back in the Pro Audio days, there were some pretty interesting grouping options. 
 
As far as I can tell, the lead/dummy fader also acts as an extra layer of gain control. Meaning that if all your grouped faders reach 0 db and the VCA fader still has 5 db's of headroom, you will effectively be able to squeeze 5 db's more out of those grouped tracks.
 
I'm still trying to figure this out, and personally, I can't really see the use. 
 
In Logic, track stacks offer most of the functionality and also provides the lead/dummy fader. Meaning that you can have a track stack with its lead fader, individual stacked tracks sent to different busses, and grouped in any fashion. It's all layers really, but so far as I can tell, nothing one couldn't work around or do otherwise in most modern DAWs. 
 
There are few things on my wish list and VCA's definitely not one of them. I already have enough points of control on gain and automation in most DAWs I've worked with.

Overall, it's a lot like a trim fader, allowing you to offset or to write automation w/o overwriting track automation.
 
The fact that the VCA fader isn't an actual output gives an extra layer of flexibility - the tracks w/ their automation could be routed to a bunch of different busses (and those busses have their own automation) and the VCA would allow you to make further level adjustments and even write further automation w/o compromising what's already automated.
 
Another thing that is different from what I can do in my DAW* is that you can have tracks associated with more than one VCA fader. So you can have one VCA for all your drums, another VCA associated only to your  kick and snare.
 
Again, personally, that sounds for a recipe for disaster as that's a lot of separate opportunities to mess up w/ gain and risk clipping. But that's just me. 
 
*Without resorting to digging into the environment, which technically could do just about any and everything.

There is also offset mode with Sonar. 

Rain
Another thing that is different from what I can do in my DAW* is that you can have tracks associated with more than one VCA fader. So you can have one VCA for all your drums, another VCA associated only to your  kick and snare.

You can just bus the kick and snare into a fader group and have independent control over the kick and snare as well as overall control from the fader group where the bus terminates. Any  DAW I've worked with can do that, it's nothing special about SONAR.
 
But I guess it would be lousy marketing copy to say "This exciting new VCA feature allows you to do things you probably don't do anyway and can already do with your existing DAW, but you don't have to create a bus! Isn't that just plain awesome?!?"
 
 

Anderton

Rain
Another thing that is different from what I can do in my DAW* is that you can have tracks associated with more than one VCA fader. So you can have one VCA for all your drums, another VCA associated only to your  kick and snare.

You can just bus the kick and snare into a fader group and have independent control over the kick and snare as well as overall control from the fader group where the bus terminates. Any  DAW I've worked with can do that, it's nothing special about SONAR.
 
But I guess it would be lousy marketing copy to say "This exciting new VCA feature allows you to do things you probably don't do anyway and can already do with your existing DAW, but you don't have to create a bus! Isn't that just plain awesome?!?"
 
 

The difference is that you could have them assigned to a VCA fader - or as many as you want - AND bussed or not bussed.
 
VCA gives you an extra layer of control independent of bussing.
 
I wouldn't argue that this is incredibly useful - to me, it's actually useless, and, as I said, too many opportunities to mess things up. I can't imagine having 4 or 5 faders messing up with the level of my snare drums or any other track.
 
But I'm always hesitant to call something useless because there's always someone out there using that stuff all the time.
 
 The great thing is that I probably learn more about the potential or lack thereof of VCA in this discussion than I did reading.

What I get in this VCA discussion is that a ganged *post fader send* volume automation function really only comes into play if you're sending the gang members (heh) to different, say FX busses. That's a rather esoteric function. It could easily be done with a FX on the track itself with a wet/dry/ control.
 
I think it's safe to say that in the virtual world of a DAW, we're not limited by the economics, engineering choices, and the paradigms formed from them that rule physical consoles.