I'm in two minds about Sonar and my future with it. On the one hand, trialing other DAWs makes you realize how many ways Sonar had it right. And it's little things, like when I play with S1 and see no peak level readout on the meters. Then there's Sonar's ease of routing, exporting, recording synths to audio etc. It has an excellent workflow and things like workspace arrangement, zooming in and out of tracks, auto-zoom, smart grid and the smart tool become almost like an extension of your brain once you're familiar with them.

On the other hand, there was a lot wrong with Sonar. And much of it was weird, almost unquantifiable stuff that's impossible to reproduce for a bug report. Things like projects developing weirdness as they got bigger and older (I even had to abandon and recreate a few projects that developed oddities). As an example, I'm working on a project now in which the Aim-Assist line is a few measures out whenever I drag a clip. I've had clips suddenly jump to another part of the screen (including other tracks) when I dropped them. I've had loads of bizarre stuff happen with automation lanes, like recording multiple parameters on a synth only to find that some of the parameters I moved didn't end up being recorded. I've had lanes disappear never to be seen again. I've had all sorts of trouble associated with those damn "orphaned envelopes," and phantom, elusive nodes that I couldn't find anywhere nonetheless artificially extending the length of my track so that "fit to screen" didn't work as expected. There is so much other annoying stuff, like the browser not supporting back/forward navigation buttons on mice, and plugin/send menus that didn't fit on screen properly. Recently I've had Sonar resetting a bunch of Waves EQ's each time I load the project, and this is a horrible, deal breaking problem that I've suffered on and off since first using Sonar in 2012.

In short, the problem with Sonar has always been that it's an old program which has picked up a bunch of oddities along the way, and has probably suffered a little under the strain of all that new stuff being piled on top of it. I'm willing to bet that there were times that Noel and his crew felt hindered by a lot of legacy stuff in the program, stuff that would probably have been written a lot differently had Sonar been designed from scratch today. The oddities that I experienced on a daily basis absolutely messed with my workflow and productivity, and as a beta tester I spent many fruitless hours trying to come up with recipes for weird, phantom bugs that would be there one minute, gone the next. I almost felt like I was not performing as a tester because of the number of weird issues I couldn't isolate, and because so many of these issues are there one minute and resolve themselves the next, it was hard not to feel like user error might be the culprit even when you were almost certain it wasn't.

So ultimately, I'm excited about leaving those oddities and quirks behind and starting afresh with a younger program that's had its foundations modeled on today's technology rather than technology from 30 years ago. I feel no "loyalty" toward Sonar, after all it's not a conscious being and has no feelings. I'm going to keep using it for as long as I'm still working on the many projects I have in development, but I think the next new project I start will be in my shiny new DAW (whatever that may be).

I just updated from X3 to Professional two weeks ago on Black Fri special the other day Doh! Havent installed it yet. am getting back into recording, after a few years of working weekends coming to an end soon, so a little more looking at this forum might of alerted me to the writing on the wall.
Will have to keep it a while to get my dollars worth. But have used X3 when I could all this time so Sonar Pro will be fine for a few more years.
 

Still using SONAR Home Studio 6 XL. 
Will continue with it until the XP computer dies.
May continue with it on my Win 10 box.

Plan to continue using 8.5, along with Reaper. Thought about the Cubase crossgrade, but pretty sure 8.5 doesn't qualify. But even if it did, I see no reason to change what I'm doing, because it works for me. And the Cubase forum just doesn't have the warm feel, not to mention rapid response, of this place. I'll be looking to haunt whichever Son Of Sonar Forum survives.

There is something romantic about using a discontinued software...[insert analogy]

As a hobby musician I will use sonar as long as possible. As stable as sonar with me now I do not know why I should buy me in the next few years another sequencer. I would then rather invest the money in plugins or virtual instruments.
 
Features in Sonar
ARA support
VST3 support
WIN10 compatible
64bit mix engine
Rewire (with Kinetic or P5 :))
creative tools like drum replacer
matrix editor .... and so on
and all the plugins like PX64, Breverb, Console emulator ... and so on.
I do not know now how the other daws are. For the last time I had cubase and logic in mind in '98. However, I have no need for it at all.
the only stone that can get in my way is the product activation during a new installation. I hope, if cakewalk actually close, we get as a user an art offline activation file.

P.s .: I still can not imagine that cakewalk actually stops. I think there will be another surprise next year. There are some software vendors with a much smaller customer base who can easily survive. I think there's something else coming.

cheers tomas

Me too.
 
I understand that folks on this forum feel the need to move away but it's too soon IMHO.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if there's an announcement in the coming days and weeks that the guys at Cakewalk are back in business. If that happens, I'm upgrading to Platinum immediately.
 
In the meantime, the product is working well and stable.
 

Me Me Me Me.  Me too!  SONAR Rocks!  

staying

Everyone thinks their woman is the best until another woman turns your head. Then you say what was I thinking. I can live again.
 
Message: Don't get too attached to things that can't love you back :)

dappa1
Everyone thinks their woman is the best until another woman turns your head. Then you say what was I thinking. I can live again.
 
Message: Don't get too attached to things that can't love you back :)

The only attachment is to the money in my bank account, and my only thought is to where my time is best spent. I see no need to change either..