Hi therage,
I recently made the Sonar to Reaper plunge. Actually, in the past 10 years or so I've been all over the board. I've used Pro Audio, Logic, Cubase, Sonar, and now I'm with Reaper.
The things I like MOST about Reaper are:
1) Support - There is a superb User Guide, a Wiki, and the excellent forums with smart people.
2) Community - In my experience, so far, the forums are not made up of a bunch of snotty know-it-alls that think everyone with less than 2000 posts are newbs. I actually enjoy reading the Reaper forums.
3) Updates - With frequent updates to the program, it's like Christmas every few weeks. I'm not talking little bitty updates with small features. Usually, the updates have new features that are quite exciting.
4) Stability - The program is rock solid, and so far I've never had any problems jumping right into an update (even the beta updates that we've had lately). I've experienced no bugs whatsoever. It's amazing to me how stable and bug-free Reaper is with all the updates Justin manages to release!
5) Flexibility - Reaper gives power to the user. It lets me work the way I want and not the way it wants me to work.
6) Routing - the routing in Reaper is top-notch and extremely flexible. The creative possibilities when it comes to routing are endless!
7) Macros - Reaper lets you build Macros (with key assignments) with up to 6 commands. These commands are from a list of just about every possible action in Reaper. Again, the possibilities are endless!
8) Speed - I double click on Reaper right now and start recording music before this sentence is completed. Reaper is very efficient and fast. To make things even better, Justin made some performance improvements in the latest 2.0 beta (beta 7). I noticed about a 5% cpu hit decrease in projects I've looked at so far.
9) Workflow - Once setup and customized the way I wanted it, Reaper just works the way I want to work. I like how it's centered around key commands. It makes working with Reaper very efficient.
10) EDIT (I almost forgot this important one!): Price - This is self-explanatory. What else can I say?
I realize that a lot of these are my opinions only. If you are considering Reaper, I strongly suggest you read the User Guide. It is well written and helps the reader visualize exactly what is possible with Reaper. In my opinion, Reaper is a work of art in and of itself. Justin is a top-notch programmer and it comes through in the quality of this great program.
Does Reaper lack some features that some other hosts have? Yes. However, I'm confident that throughout the 2.x series these differences are going to become fewer and fewer. (IMO, Reaper does lack a bit on the MIDI editing side. I'm hoping to see some MIDI improvements over the 2.x update cycle.)
After I used Reaper for a few weeks, I loaded Sonar back up just to see how I felt. Sonar felt clunky and slow compared to Reaper (IMO). I uninstalled Sonar after that.
