Just pay off your damn SONAR payments and you'll have a fully functional SONAR tho you won't get future improvements after the 12 month period.  Exactly like buying SONAR X3 in the box and putting it on a computer with free updates.  If you take up Cake's payment plan and don't make the final payment(s) you get demo mode.  Just like a car or anything else you buy on credit, you have to pay it off.
 
If you are planning to the nth degree about what might happen, may I suggest worrying that global warming will bring back the dinosaurs and how large of a gun you need in your bunker.   A better use of everyone's time. 
 
As Curly of the 3 stooges said, "Is everyone around here dumb but me?"
 
@

Its the other way around may be ;)

Thanks Noel for answering! :)

AT
Just pay off your damn SONAR payments and you'll have a fully functional SONAR tho you won't get future improvements after the 12 month period.  Exactly like buying SONAR X3 in the box and putting it on a computer with free updates.  If you take up Cake's payment plan and don't make the final payment(s) you get demo mode.  Just like a car or anything else you buy on credit, you have to pay it off.

 
Most people who buy a car or a house do so using a loan with the purchased object serving as collateral against payment of the loan. Failure to make a payment typically triggers a seizure of the object, but not a loss of all equity in it. A sheriff's sale of a house seized for mortgage default often nets more than the remaining loan principle, and after deducting principle, seizure and sale expenses and contractual penalties, the amount left is returned to the borrower.
 
In this case, your Sonar license has no re-sale value, so to that extent, the comparison effectively still applies. One clear difference is that you are not able to reclaim use of your seized collateral property by the expedient of making a new single monthly payment. It would appear that in the case of Sonar membership lapsing, you can start your membership anew, and open your existing projects in a new version without having to pay Cakewalk any back payments or fees.
 
The more apt analogy would be an eviction from an apartment for nonpayment of the rent. The difference is that, in the real world, it would be an unusual landlord who would let you move back in at the same rent if you had been evicted in the past.
 

I'm really confused on the demo thing. I get that Sonar would revert to demo mode if payments are stopped. But there is an issue with that - consider the following example;
 
User A has a valid Sonar license for, say January 2015. He makes some payments but stops them in August of the same year. He can roll back to January, or stay in demo mode indefinitely, correct?
User B is interested in Sonar. In October 2015, he installs a demo on his computer. This demo is now newer than, and different from User A's demo, correct?
 
It seems to me a demo should be up to date. Like TabSel said, how would User A know whether any significant upgrades are out beyond constantly checking the website? I think C3 should AT LEAST have some kind of notification thing in it. Even better, it should be possible to keep your "last valid" version and run a demo of the latest version next to it. The exact same way it has been up until now - run X2 and a demo of X3.

I think he can only roll back to his last permanently activated version and have that work.
The January version was only activated for a one month period, now expired, so it would not work as a full version. He did not buy a permanently activated version with the then current feature set, he bought activation for full featured versions on a month to month basis from Jan-Aug. Now none of his previous versions will be able to work in anything but demo mode.
 
The newest demo mode might include features not available earlier, and may include the ability to open projects saved in the older versions, but it is still crippled by being unable to save projects. Whether the newest demo will include the newest features is a real question. It might be technically easier to do it that way than to serve up a separate version for download.  But, there might be licensing issues with third party developers who do not want their plugins included in a demo release. The demo versions released for the X series apparently did not include all the features in the full version.

Exactly

Thank you for chiming in :)

Sanderxpander
I'm really confused on the demo thing. I get that Sonar would revert to demo mode if payments are stopped. But there is an issue with that - consider the following example;
 
User A has a valid Sonar license for, say January 2015. He makes some payments but stops them in August of the same year. He can roll back to January, or stay in demo mode indefinitely, correct?
User B is interested in Sonar. In October 2015, he installs a demo on his computer. This demo is now newer than, and different from User A's demo, correct?
 
It seems to me a demo should be up to date. Like TabSel said, how would User A know whether any significant upgrades are out beyond constantly checking the website? I think C3 should AT LEAST have some kind of notification thing in it. Even better, it should be possible to keep your "last valid" version and run a demo of the latest version next to it. The exact same way it has been up until now - run X2 and a demo of X3.

User A: His August build will drop into Demo mode. The user could go an install the latest demo at any point after that. 
 
User B: Yes, the demo newer, but see User A's case. 

The rollback function in C3 will handle the newer demo/earlier version use case on a particular system. 

Right, so User A can indeed get the "latest demo" at any point, that's good to know. However, is there also the option of running his "last valid" version alongside the newest demo, compared to someone running X2 and a demo of X3? Or is the upgrade/rollback process so simple and quick that it is trivial?

HOW does user A install the latest demo?

Is this another build "outside" the C3? So C3 handles two builds, the latest save enabled, and the latest build reverted to demo mode, and there is a 3rd build, a up-to-date demo build, and another 4th demo build when an update gets rolled out?

As far as I understood Noel, the C3 does NOT indicates updates nor installs them when in Demo mode...?

By the way both Seth and Noel, thanks for being so patient and taking the time to explain all this. I actually already bought my upgrade and am not planning to move away from Sonar or anything. Just interested in what these changes mean.