Need some background info on Sonar (Pro's & Con's)

[moodswinger]

I'm writing this to find out some info, a guy in a band I've just recorded, got interested in recording and now he's kinda gone OTT. We did some talking, I gave him some ideas and insight, and now last night he came to me with a laundry list of stuff he's decided to get. Not the problem, good for him. The thing is this....
I know from the first conversation, he knows NOTHING about recording, or for the most part any gear outside of guitars and amps. Not to sound demeaning just to give an idea of what I mean, he's never heard of or didn't know what an SM58 was.
So first things first. He says he's decided to go with cakewalk when I asked which app, he said he didn't know but there was a "studio" version and a "pro" version, So I'm guessing Sonar. He said he's getting hooked up with a 8 in/out firewire interface "volume adjustment", I'm guessing some kinda mixer with faders. bottom line to me it sounds like he went to guitar center (or the like) and somebody there told him get this and this and this, and he got some schpiel.
Now I don't/haven't used Sonar so I know NOTHING about it first hand, so I was hoping to get some pro's and con's just about the DAW itself and what's it gonna be like starting with for someone at his level.
I'm gonna try and desuade him a bit and at least try some demos and/or check out some tutorials on a few different ones before dropping $400, but I wanted user op's on this one in particular cuz like I said I don't know myself.
I'm posting this in a few other forums too so please only answer in one if you happen to run across it again.
Thanks all,
Cheers,
MoodSwinger

 

[Hard2Hear]

The biggest advantage to Sonar, in my opinion, compared to other audio software is that all the Windows shortcuts work in it just like using MS Office or anythign else. I.E. Ctrl-C copies, crtl-V pastes, Crtl-z undo. Makes it easy to get into for anyone familiar with how Windows works in general.

 

[therage!]

Before you drop the jack ask yourself...what can Sonar do for me that lets say Reaper couldn't. Sonar has some nice plugs and soft synths etc that you might really want but then you might not need them. Cake comes out with a new Sonar version every year and to stay current will run you about $180 a year. I'm talking about the producer version but you could go with a cheaper version too.

 

[mixsit]

Before you drop the jack ask yourself...what can Sonar do for me that lets say Reaper couldn't. Sonar has some nice plugs and soft synths etc that you might really want but then you might not need them. Cake comes out with a new Sonar version every year and to stay current will run you about $180 a year. I'm talking about the producer version but you could go with a cheaper version too.

On the other hand those 'old versions work just fine too. People often skip lots of versions. Naturally at some point one looks at the new features and our mix skills or whatever and see reasons to bump up.
Personally I picked 'Cake over 'Cubase back at ProAudio 8 for what seems like a silly reason; Cake was suposed to have better documentaion and support. (at the time they both seemed on par otherwise). Have no reason for $ProTools$ in the least here -most proj. start and finish here, and to be sure there's no part of Sonar that's holding me back at any level.

 

[Ethan Winer]

Big SONAR fan here. Very stable and very capable. Its MIDI is also outstanding if your friend plans to use samplers and soft-synths.

--Ethan