I don't quite understand what you meant about the plugins. Does Sonar 2.0 have instruments in the application when you purchase it or do you have to buy them all? Does Sonar "do it all" (i.e. complete studio mixing, editing, whatever..)?
I`m pretty new at this myself but I`ll try to help you here.
I have found that Sonar can do most everything that one would need to record, edit, mix, master, and play back, as soon as its installed with a compatible sound card. You don`t even need an external midi instrument to drive it, if you can write parts on a staff, or you are experienced with step recording. You can assign from a multitude of internal voices, and groups of instruments from other programs can be accessed use on each track that you create for playback and saving in a variety of audio formats. You can import audio informationfrom other sources and record it in Sonar. I would recommend visiting the www.cakewalk.com and www.cakewalknet.com websites and look at information concerning the Sonar XL 2.0 package. Then I would visit the Cakewalk forum on here in-depth and regularly to search the archives for information that you need. I would recommend a midi keyboard and some type of midi interface connector if you don`t have one. I hope that I have helped you here....
