And you get Galaxy X-FX Free as well

I'm liking the demo, but there is an issue of terminology as Bit said earlier. It does a few things better than Sonar ever did. I inserted AD2 and proceeded to spend 20 minutes trying to figure out how to assign individual outs for each drum. I was frustrated that it seemed so difficult, but then I noticed a little + on the main track. I clicked that and found that all the individual tracks had been inserted and routed automatically and then put inside the main folder.
 
I'm so sick of huge corporate entities that I will definitely be avoiding ANY of the big companies when looking for a new home. I'm looking for what Cakewalk used to be. The little guy that could.

This looks like a great alternative for me.  Anyone know how long the $99 for special for Mixcraft 8 Pro lasts?
 
I'm heading out on a business trip tomorrow.  I'd like to try the demo out for the full 14-days, but figure the sale will be over before I'd get back next Friday.

I believe it's today only...but could be wrong

ampfixer
 
 I'm so sick of huge corporate entities that I will definitely be avoiding ANY of the big companies when looking for a new home. I'm looking for what Cakewalk used to be. The little guy that could.

Same here. It reminds me quite a bit of P5v2 too which helps!

Dual screen capability has become a must. Sad that some of these alts don't allow it.

aconte22
...which is why you will see that the Loop Library asset management and Video editing are far superior than any other DAW on the market today. Mixcraft 8 is for real!

OK, I'm intrigued by this since it's a pain point for me. Care to elaborate? How does Mixcraft's Loop Library asset management stack up against Cubase's Media Bay?

So I tried Mixcraft 8 demo today.  I thought that it was ok. I was able to figure out how to do most stuff that I wanted. I inserted a couple of soft synths and messed around with the midi stuff. I also recorded a few audio tracks and did some "comping" and overdubs. I had their "manual" up but it seems a bit sparse so it was hard to find some things.  It seems like it is fairly capable and with more time with it I am sure it could do most of what I currently do in Sonar.
 
There were a few things that I couldn't figure out.  I couldn't get the play head to return to the previous location when you hit stop. Probably a setting somewhere that I didn't find. I couldn't figure out how to drag copy a midi note. I had to copy and paste or just add a new one in.  I did like that in the Midi editor screen that it showed the note value on the midi notes.  I also couldn't figure out how to select controllers and delete them.
 
On the audio side I was able to time stretch a clip, record several takes, do looping etc. I couldn't figure out how to do cross fades between takes in their lanes or how to select parts of overlapping takes. I could mute and unmute the clips but didn't know how to move the split point. When editing/timing audio clips I like to split them and then use the "alt-shift" to move the audio date around in the clip window rather then moving the whole clip. I couldn't figure a way to do this.
 
They also have the idea of a send track. It seems like a bus but one that is specifically for sends from tracks. When you add a send track knobs show up on all tracks to send to it kind of like a console. I don't really like that since most of the time I only want to send a few tracks to a bus, unless it is a global reverb, and the knobs on each track seem to clutter things up.
 
Finally, I couldn't seem to figure out how to route the tracks to anything else other then the "master" output.  I probably needed to add a bus or something else.
 
I am sure if you dig into this it would be a fine DAW and hopefully will keep getting developed.  The UI seems not quite as polished and as mentioned before a bit more "cartoony" for lack of a better word.
 
Just some more information for those looking into this.

To get the play head to go back to your start position, click on the gear in the main toolbar, go to "interface" options, and click "Auto-rewind to start position when playback/recording ends". One detail: For me, this process does have an odd side effect, though -- when I select (or deselect) this option, it pushes all the faders on my MCU to 0. 

bitflipper
(even better, it's like SONAR's PRV at 8.5)

I keep reading stuff like this on this forum - am I not the only one who still loves and uses 8.5 and detests all the newer versions? I work in 8.5, then mix in X3 for VST3.