Home Studio is a stripped-down version of SONAR. It lacks some of the higher-end professional features of SONAR, but the guts are the same. So the difference really has nothing to do with which is better for what type of music; they're really about the same on that level. If you need the prefessional features, then you would want SONAR; if you just wanted to record some stuff, you might prefer spending less and going with Home Studio. As to what the missing features are that make up the difference, I don't know, but no doubt they have a feature comparison chart or something at the cakewalk website: