I use sonar and logic almost daily and still find them difficult to compare. Every time I find myself thinking one is "clearly superior" in a particular area, I discover something new that makes me question whether the difference is inherent in the DAW or a matter of how I work witht the DAW. The only thing I am completely sure of is that based on my experience, Logic has their best overall set of non-third party plugins. Including Sonar's third party plugins brings it closer but not sure quite. Cubase is close. FL studio is probably the closest believe it or not. I don't use FL much but find myself surprised when time after time I hear sound made with the included synths that hold up against any other synth included with other DAWS.

strikinglyhandsome1
The first step is admitting you have a problem. Now for the second step, cclarry.

I MOST DEFINITELY have a problem...and I'll be the FIRST to admit it...many of them 

19?  How about the 117 greatest words that start with the letter X? That'd be as relevant. :P
 
And Live!, really... Seems to me that it's a pretty limited set of options for a first choice. For exemple, if you are scoring to picture, Live doesn't really make sense - DP, Cubase or Logic are much better options and offer much more exhaustive sets of tools. 
 
I doubt that anyone can be as proficient with more than a few DAWs - so any such list is a non-sense. Heck I've been working with Logic for years now, spending hours with it every day, I've completed the Apple certification training manual and I'm working my way through the second one, and no matter how well I know it, I'm still figuring out things all the time and going "Wow! I can do this like that? Awesome"...
 
I don't think I'm a particularly slow learner, and I can't for the life of me imagine that someone would have enough time to reach a point where they can make an objective comparison. Whatever you chose to use is the best.
 
 
 
 
 

Larry..I tried to take the many DAW approach for awhile but I found myself never really getting proficient with any and blaming the DAWs. I am in the process of deleting DAWs now. I just got rid of reaper. Like the idea and pricing scheme but could not find any features I could not already achieve. I have not been as wowed by mixbus as the rest of the crowd. I do think it sounds good but honestly it is Ardour( a free DAW) with a really nice saturation plugin and Harrison name attached. I recorded identical things in Ardour and mixbus (bypassing them saturation) and could not tell the difference. I will install mixbus on my linux computer and compare more in like OS enviornments and see if I can find a more dramatic difference. If I don't, I will likely just use Ardour in Linux environment.

Same here. I do have MixBus installed but I can't seem to use it, or even just to find time for it. I've checked out the newest version of Cubase and decided not to upgrade. Previous version uninstalled. Pro Tools - not upgraded and deleted. Studio One - sold.
 
 

When does Cubase 8 come out?

Second or third support the premise that these polls are absolutely worthless, except for getting an insight into what others are using. In case we are missing something.
 
Have seen forum posts from DAW's recruiting fanboys to swarm these polls to get brand X on top. Meaningless, misleading, ignorant.
 
My brain is fortunately limited. Got Sonar and Reaper. Deleted everything else. Can't do without either one of these elegant creations because each picks up the death bell short falls of the other. Some may argue that Renoise and Mixbus deliver digital Nirvana.  Rationale got to be listened to and taken it for what it may be worth. I always try to learn something regardless how remote.
 
John
 
 

I like Sonar and Ableton best. Ableton has the best drag and drop and best gapless audio of any DAW. But for hardcore audio editing the pros seem to use dp, samplitude, nuendo, or more likely pro tools. Horses for courses.

Another plus recommendation for Samplitube from you guys. Adobe Audition 1.5, cool but goes south on Win 8.1. Scrambling for an alternative. Will have to give up my love affair with this dinosaur at some point. Degenerate "upgrades" to Audition are a downhill requiem at best. Sad to see the corruption of something that had such potential years ago when Syntrillium was calling the shots. Adobe bought them out and unfortunately, the rest is history.
 
John

JohnKenn
Another plus recommendation for Samplitube from you guys. Adobe Audition 1.5, cool but goes south on Win 8.1. Scrambling for an alternative. Will have to give up my love affair with this dinosaur at some point. Degenerate "upgrades" to Audition are a downhill requiem at best. Sad to see the corruption of something that had such potential years ago when Syntrillium was calling the shots. Adobe bought them out and unfortunately, the rest is history.
 
John

The versions of Audition went down after 1.5 but that was due to Adobe going through a transition in order to make Audition cross-platform. The initial attempts were too much like Soundbooth and sucked. Since CC Audition is just as stable as 1.5. Granted the bulk of the best improvements have went toward audio for video applications but I can't think of any feature that is worse than predecessors.