As far as I know, a few years ago Sonar was sold to Bandlabs, who offered it for free for some time. I was one of those who took them up on their free offer. I'm not sure if they do anymore - but even so - it's got my vote as the best DAW out there. It is in all intents and purposes the latest Publisher version of Sonar but refined, less cpu intensive and they update it frequently - all free. I hear what you're saying about industry standards and who does what, but I have found nothing like it out there for the shear versatility of it. I have heard you can do some things in some DAWs and other things in others but, Cakewalk does everything. If you were once a user you should give it another try. It's become much more user friendly. You can customize the UI to your liking and as I said, way easier on the cpu than it used to be. Just my 2 cents.
Yes, it's still free and still supported and updated by bandlab. Great company. I was a sonar user professionally in the old days, and I used bandlab's build (which is really good and fixes some old cakewalk bugs finally) for a few months recently again to see how it was going for them.
Great daw.
But everything else I posted about it stays true - sonar is the heaviest daw and least efficient for your cpu. It has the best features by far. It only works on windows. It is free now. It can hang and get slow at times, even with the best builds which are the current bandlab ones. It has by far the best midi features around. It has incredible built in looping and splitting features. Reaper has copied most of it's looping and track features though currently. Sonar is much less flexible to setup VSTi and DXi instruments than in some other daws, particularly versus reaper which is exactly the same "click the effects button on a track, click add, choose your instrument, and put midi through it" that works for reaper's effects chain. in fact you put effects in the list after the instrument and they work on the instrument. Routing in reaper lets you choose to output midi to any track you want, so if you want midi from 3 tracks into one virtual instrument, it's done with a send just like audio.
Reaper has one way to get things out of each track - sends. midi and audio are treated the same way, which is magical once you realize it. Reaper has one way to add plugins, boht effects and instruments, to a track. Again, once you realize that, it's just so dumb simple and easy to navigate.
Sonar IS a great app. I recommend it. But I moved away from it because it's SO complex and easy to get frustrated with it's treatment of virtual instruments, and also because it taxes even the 6 core i9 cpu in my workstation with big projects. Reaper I have yet to find the limits of aside from with one test where I had like a hundred tracks with like 16 plugins per track or something all playing audio at the same time... which was an academic test.
Honestly, any daw will work.
Reaper is the standard most serious mixers work with these days simply because it is better, faster, lighter, more stable, and more flexible.
Sonar is fantastic, with a good computer and lots of knowledge of how a studio routes things (because it gets complicated fast).
Cubase is great, nothing major wrong with it, but for me it has let me down too many time in paid projects due to hanging, instability, and messing up it's audio track playback sync.
Protools is great, but less powerful for editing than any of the others. However it has some great and very fast to use tools once you learn them. I honestly think it's trailing these days, though. The best thing about protools was the hardware for the real studio version back in the old days - combined with a great simple UI for nonlinear editing. It has been surpassed without keeping up, although it works fine for what it is.
Ableton is amazing, does things differently, and easier to get into for some people unless you are a recording engineer and know the traditional systems better (Where a traditional daw makes more sense).
If you invest in the presonus system, they have great hardware to go with their daw, and together it is a terrific ecosystem. But I don't want to get stuck in a single ecosystem that really works best when you use their controller hardware with their daw (this is true with presonus, although worth it if you want to do that).
All the rest - they all work.
Up to you, OP. Lots of great advice and experiences in this thread, and I think it shows clearly that any daw will do!
