I've started using a DAW charmingly titled REAPER, written by some of the folks behind WinAmp.  It’s not flawless, but I'm quickly leaning toward dropping any further attempts to use SONAR.

In the past, I've been a huge fan of Cakewalk.  I used Cakewalk back when it was just a MIDI sequencer (back then, it was basically the only sequencer around for Windows).  When Cakewalk Pro Audio came out, I thought it was awesome:  It revolutionized my home recordings.  Then came SONAR, which was also great, but it came with a considerable number of additional headaches that I never experienced in Pro Audio (mainly dealing with latency and MIDI timing).  SONAR also added a sluggish behemoth of an interface - you needed a blazing fast computer just to update the screen.

Coincidentally, for the last 10 years I've been idle with recording, mainly due to lack of time and equipment.  This year I decided that I was going to compose and record a song over Christmas vacation.  Given my general annoyance with and lack of excitement about SONAR 3*, I further decided I was going to try out REAPER (version 3.161).  Exploring a new DAW would hopefully inspire me.

I'm now convinced REAPER is going to replace SONAR as my DAW software of choice.

First of all, REAPER's interface is FAST.  My DAW is a pitiful, 7-year-old Windows XP 1.8 GHz P4 with an ancient MOTU 2408, and this thing screams on it.  The difference between SONAR and REAPER in this department is night and day.

Secondly, REAPER's timing is rock solid and everything just works.  I'm using the free ASIO4ALL driver which works flawlessly with the MOTU 2408.  Most importantly:  I was able to easily set up REAPER to compensate for the 2408's recording latency, so when I record tracks, they're automatically moved back in time and fixed!  I could never figure out how to do that in SONAR 3.  Every time I recorded something I had to go into the clip properties and adjust the starting time back, and you have to specify the delta value in measures:beats:ticks, which I can assure you was the height of suckitude and really killed a lot of my enthusiasm for recording.  Not to mention the fact that MIDI tracks never seemed to sync right no matter what.

Fair warning, though:  The complexity of REAPER is quite daunting.  If you're not familiar with DAW concepts already, I wouldn't even bother.  But if you're a programmer and a power user like me, the interface paradigm is actually kind of intuitive.  The fact that "tracks" can contain anything from MIDI to audio to buses to folders is pretty cool.  The routing system is just about the coolest thing ever:  It's like being able to build your own mixer.

REAPER's performance is quite good.  I can process a surprising number of tracks on my 1.8 GHz P4.  With around 10 tracks, some reverbs and compression effects, I was only using about 25% of the CPU.  It also has an amazing feature called ReaMote which allows you to offload effects processing to other computers on the local network – it works, and it rocks.

To be fair, REAPER does have some problems, which is not surprising considering how often it's updated.  From a user interface perspective, it's not for the faint of heart.  The buttons are microscopic and hard to find.  Half the time there isn’t even a button and you have to remember a keyboard command.  There are too many items on giant context menus.  The top menus are staggeringly long.  I've also been able to crash the program by using a mute automation envelope, so it may not be quite as stable as they would lead you to believe.  (That was the only stability issue I encountered though.)

The only missing feature that I might wish for is some kind of beat slicing tool, which was one thing I really liked in SONAR 3.  (It's quite possible that REAPER has such a feature, but I haven't found it yet.)

At any rate, I give REAPER two thumbs up.  I enjoyed using it quite a lot and I'm looking forward to seeing what else it can do.  It might very well permanently replace SONAR on my DAW.

* Yes, I still have SONAR 3.  For all I know, the latest version is wonderful.  (I wouldn't bet on it, though.)