Your reasons to upgrade to Sonar Platinum

The proper solo/mute of drum maps alone was worth the upgrade (for me). Followed by mix scenes and Vocal sync. The AD2 voucher was nice but since I already owned nearly the whole AD2 product I negotiated with XLN and the voucher was used to complete my setup to (finally) complete my ownership of all XLN MIDI Packs, kit pieces and kits. It just ended up being a dollar for dollar swap.
 
One time payment is cheaper, but 12 months is good if you're strapped for cash. or your significant other is against all that outlay at once.
 
I already own Reaper 4.x, Harrison Mixbus and Studio One Pro V2. SONAR is my main DAW that is why I upgraded.

> - What makes the upgrade worth for you?
 
Bug fixes.

Getting AD2 and other content (plus some work flow upgrades) for a minor monthly outlay!

Grum.

Well worth it. I have tools to get me through what I couldn't do before.

Thanks for the inputs!
Anything new on the step sequencer front?

AD2 was the kicker, but I do like the mix scenes and PRV improvements.

mudgel
Not sure if you've seen these pages so here's some links.

Thanks, I had not found the blog entry, which was quite detailed.
So lots of good things and I think I'll have to upgrade sooner than later.
 
My only regret is that nothing seems to be done for the matrix view and/or quickly prototyping a song such as with Ableton Live or Fruity loops, which is a shame.
 
To my knowledge, none of the major DAW supports a Live workflow, this could be a unique selling point for a future version of Sonar: super quick writing + super fine adjustments / changes.
 

Doktor Avalanche
> - What makes the upgrade worth for you?
 
Bug fixes.

 
+1
Lots of great bug fixes have been made every month. 

In addition to S-Plat I own MixCraft7 Pro Studio, Reaper and Harrison Mixbus. Sonar is my main DAW. I upgraded to Platinum for the bug fixes and new features. 
 
kevmsmith I prefer EZD2. For one I think the drums sound better than ADD2 and two after using the "tap-2-find" feature I'd never want to go without again.

Anderton

mudgel
The monthly content has been guitar centric because it's being provided by Craig Anderton and provides a useful set of additional tools (not just for guitar) that demonstrate the wide range of creative tools buried within Sonar.

A FWIW...the guitar-centric content just sort of happened that way, because I was drawing on material I'd done for myself. However the latest update had IRs and an FX chain for "mastering" kick drums, and to give you an idea of what's coming up, I'm working on more instruments for Rapture and Rapture Pro, a test signals suite for checking room acoustics, electronic percussion loop library, more IRs, etc. In particular, I want to do more work with synths...for example, a loop library of some of the Korg Z1's cool arpeggiator effects. I won't abandon guitar-oriented content (got some semi-hollow body guitars for sampling!), but I've done a lot of what I wanted to do.
 

Interesting. I enjoy a monthly surprise no matter whether large or small.

The amazing community here were my reason. They essentially passed the proverbial hat and got me bumped up. Mindblowing kindness.
 
However my reasons for WANTING to upgrade were largely related to MixRecall. I have not had a chance to use it yet (been mostly tracking) but as a novice mix "engineer" the ability to easily compare various efforts to see what I've done right/wrong is a huge bonus. Even for experienced/pro engineers this has to be a massively useful tool. Being able to export any or all of your mixes at once to cart around for testing or showing to clients or whatever is pretty darned awesome.
 
The Control Bar improvements are freaking amazing and many of those tweaks are things I had been asking for for a VERY long time. It's even better than anything I dreamed up.
 
As newcomer to MIDI the new PRV was/is looking pretty slick so I was interested in that. Those teeny tiny little blocks were kind of messing me up as well as controllers so it all looked a lot better. I have not tried it out yet but am looking forward to it. The Paint Tool looks cool as well. Kind of want them to create an audio version of it. That would be awesome but perhaps impractical.
 
More personally I asked some of the folks here to test a very specific bug that had been driving me NUTS in X3 reagarding view jumping when selecting between tracks. It was a MASSIVE slow down for my workflow and was pretty much one of the only things that bothered me in X3. Sure enough it was fixed and I am ever so freaking happy because already it has saved me probably hours of scrolling, double checking to make sure I'm in the right spot and outright temper tantrums (and possibly physical manifestations such as hypertension... seriously it stressed me out that badly).
 
Everything else is gravy. However the additional AD2 Adpaks allowed me to snag the Fairfax 1 kit which produces a very specific drum sound I have been wanting to duplicate for my own work for a very long time. That of course is the Nirvana Nevermind drum sound. IMO those are probably the best sounding live drums in the past 30 years. Heck... probably ever (but I'm reluctant to leave out Who's Next but they were working with far less back then).
 
Anyway... great upgrade I think. It is probably more of a cumulative "wow factor" built on more subtle additions and improvements compared to other versions (especially if you are upgrading from X3) but some of these things are very critical improvements for specific users and the on the broader spectrum it's kind of like a slow steady wave of awesomeness washing over us... and we still have 12 months of stuff coming down the pipe.

I was playing with the Virt Keyboard a bit right after I installed Dorch. It is extremely responsive and will serve me well.
 
I did not include that in my post because I was basing my reasoning on what I was thinking before I actually got the upgrade and the VK came after but that was something I had actually been wanting since I first bought X1 (and knew essentially nothing about DAWs).
 
To me I found it weird that no one had figured out a way to control synths from the QWERTY and that my new fancy DAW couldn't do that. I think I even mentioned it back then. Since then though I demo'd another DAW (the "cheap" DAW) and it includes a QWERTY controller so I was about to start railing on the Bakers for one to be developed. Literally a couple weeks later we got the announcement one was going to be provided.
 
And it is, as far as I can tell so far, far superior to the one included in the "cheap" DAW.
 
So yeah... that's pretty darned cool.
 
I'm also getting into the idea of using the ARA audio to MIDI function on bass tracks. As in... my bass gear is kind of lame but I prefer to perform my own parts. By converting it and cleaning up the resulting MIDI to match the live track I can beef up the live tone without burying/removing it. I actually thought this was a totally original Beepster idea but a while back someone linked to an article on SOS you (Craig) wrote describing that exact procedure. lol
 
Point is, I haven't checked out the Brian Hargroove samples yet but I love PE and I'm on the hunt for good, realistic MIDI bass samples to beef up my crummy single coil Mexi P-Bass DI tracks so those will likely be a welcome addition.
 
Cheers.

BTW... I know when I post things like that I risk being labelled a "fanbois" (and probably in some minds I already am) but I mean what I say. Those are things I am very happy about and makes me glad I stuck it out with Sonar (things weren't always so rosy for me).
 
As far as I'm concerned I work for the forum users who helped me learn and have now sponsored me with the latest update. I will, and do, bring up my needs, wants and annoyances with the program when they arise. At this point though, IMO, it really is a good release that works well so I'm saying it and those who doubt my sincerity can kindly shove their innuendo and preconceptions up their mono output ports.
 
:-)

So in the end I just purchased the platinum upgrades because it seems there are no more bug fixes for X3 and the bug annoying me (switching between 2 vsts in media explorer preview audio is totally broken) is listed as fixed in the new version.
 
I'm not sure how I feel about paying so much for bug fixes. I hope the new features will make it worth it. Downloading right now!