Hi all. Feels like home coming back to post here. I remember years ago when my first posts were about Guitar Tracks 3 and 4!
 
I have an HP laptop that I am using to type this. As an experiment, I authorized it and downloaded SONAR X2 Producer on this very machine a while back. I bought the download on May 20, 2013. So, the SONAR Producer X2 I have is about three years old. I'm on a HP ENVY version 1511, i7, 2.6 Ghz, Windows 10 Home, 16 gb of Ram and 64 bit. I am only interested in home recording, song writing, and work tapes and some high end demos. I just want to have something that works good, is reliable, has all the basics, and that I can enjoy at home. I am not tryin to be a pro engineer, or compete with the big boys for radio quality master tracks and mixes.
 
I'm getting re-acquainted with things here and I was trying to see what upgrade I might need. But I don't see an upgrade for X2 Producer. All I see is "Artist," "Platinum," and "Professional." Was "Producer" gobbled up by one of these? Is there a line called "Producer" Now?
 
I hope someone can bring me up to speed a little on this and tell what an upgrade for this would be. I'm a little hesitant to try anything else on this machine, since finally...after all the years of frustration with Cakewalk on a Windows laptop, I finally got it to work, and it's working fine. So...I don't want to take a chance on an upgrade on this machine unless it is something I truly need. I have a Jim Roseberry desktop that I would use for my serious machine, but I'm not sure if I even need an upgrade there either. This is so far ahead of Guitar Tracks 4 (which I loved) that it's like a dream come true, already.
 
Do I really need to upgrade to anything? If I do, what would it be? Is the "Producer" line still in production?

Thanks everyone!
JGP
PS. Ignore the equipment specs below. Most of that is outdated and I need to update it.
 
 

Short answer is things have gotten a lot better since x2.  X2 was buggy and  myself skippped it and went from 8.5 to X3. It's a new company now and they seem to be focused on stability and adding new features. Some usefull , some just make things complicated. But overall Sonar is good bang for the buck. 

Thanks Cactus. Is X3 called Platinum or Professional? What would an upgrade from X2 cost? My buddy has X3 Studio, I think it's called, and he loves it.

You just go to the top of the page here and follow the links to the cakewalk store.. X3 is 2 years ago we are now into just plain Sonar and either Artist, Professional or PLatinum. 
 
\http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR

OK, thanks Cactus. I was at that page earlier, but I was looking for "X2" or "X3" etc. So, if I upgrade it will be from X2 to either plain Artist, plain Professional, or plain Platinum. I assume all of them are a step up from what I have, Producer X2.
 
Now, I'll go look through all the specs on them and see which ones looks like it will fit my needs best.
 
This is still the best DAW software forum on the net.
JGP

Hi JGP,
 
I still use X2 producer and do not see any need to upgrade to Platinum, Artist or whatever. For what I do it works fine and that is recording instrumental audio tracks and some MIDI for drums or strings. Cakewalk's ownership changed several times and I think that is the main reason for these changes.
Regarding your question: I know there is a Producer X2a Patch, I don't know if you can find it in the archive files of Cakewalk, but if needed I still have it somewhere on my PC.
 
Jan

The equivalent to X2 Producer is Sonar Platinum.

If X2 is doing everything that you want, then perhaps there is no need for you to upgrade.

Personally, I find the difference between X2 (or even X3) and Platinum to be enormous. I would hate to have to go back to X2.

If you upgrade before the deadline, you will get the Lifetime Upgrade, which means you will never have to pay for another Sonar update again.

Worth thinking about..

HTH

I'm with JB on this. I see no logical reason to not upgrade and for the reasons given. We can't know what the future will bring but we can look at the past when CW rolled out monthly updates and what they did with them. Unless one was here watching and downloading each update its hard to explain how big a deal that was. Now at this time one has the option to have this going on for ever. Speak of a no brainer. This has to be the easiest no brainer in history.
 
If you use Sonar and most everybody on this forum does then you have no real choice. Upgrade to Platinum and get the lifetime updates too.  Personally anyone that rejects this would be wise and keep that bit of news to themselves if they don't want to be viewed poorly.   

Hey guys, don't try the psychological tricks on me. I started with Sonar Home 4XL, then upgraded to Sonar Home 7XL. Then I upgraded to Sonar X1 Studio followed by Sonar X1 Producer Extended. Finally I did the upgrade to Sonar X2 Producer. I can imagine that when you work daily with artists and in studios you want to be top of the bill. For me as a home recording old man (69) with only instrumentals and creating backing tracks for those instrumentals, it has everything I want, just like this guy JGP who placed this thread originally.
 
Of course it is tempting to upgrade with life time upgrades, but as I will have to skip X3 it will cost me a vast amount of money. However X2 also does not cost a monthly amount of money. Personally I do not like these kind of constructions with follow up payments.
X2 is also a kind of a life time setup. Although I will not get new functionality CW has the obligation to bring out updates when major operating problems occur (there was only one update so far the, X2a Patch). It works fine on the W10 platform (as does X1) and with the interfaces I use.
 
Finally, I also have Cubase 8LE and I can tell you that IMO Cakewalk is much more intuitive.

jan.ynske
Hey guys, don't try the psychological tricks on me.

You can safely ignore that post, bit of a funny fish that one ;-)