You're welcome Ray. So good that you are up and running.  Rather steep learning curve with Reaper. Takes awhile for it to start making sense, but entirely worth the effort.
John

Hi John
The one thing that had me enthused about Reaper is that there are many videos to help with getting up to speed.
 
It's a shame about Cakewalk, but, alas, I'm moving on. I don't want the risk of being in the middle of a project of many hours with a DAW that has stopped working and is without any hope of having it fixed by tech support. 
(although, this forum is a great resource).
 
Good luck.
Ray
 

Thank you Ray,
 
One anomaly about Reaper is how the currently bloated 11 MB installer for 64 bit delivers such a solid, killer powerhouse of control over the audio and midi landscape. The thing installs bare bones in less than a minute. Cold and efficient.
 
My fanboy perspective is that nothing out there is more stable and dependable, and yes, I've tried them all except the Bitwig program.
 
Interesting part of Reaper is that it comes with about nothing vst or vsti except for a small, severely powerful suite of stock plugs vst/vsti programs that either do what the pro stuff does, or does what the pro stuff cannot for any price. Uh...the included vsti ReaSynth could use some love though... Not my favorite synth...
 
The vast majority of included plugins stock are the JS extensions. Crazy bunch of effects and utilities that are all over the map. Personally find the majority of them to have no use at all. As in I don't fire up Reaper and head to the JS menu to grab an effect.
 
However, if you are a geek. Can double click on the JS plug, like a flanger or delay. Brings up the text editor and you are in the driver's chair to create your own derivation by playing with a few lines of text. You have just created a plugin that nobody else has.
 
So sorry to see Sonar go down. Was my second favorite DAW.
 
John