So as many of you have seen I have had many issues with Sonar since buying 5 months ago. I decided to jump ship to Ableton Live. However I do like some of my instruments and fx that came with Sonar so my question is can I take those into Live with me? I even considered buying PE if I could take those FX and Session drummer 3 with me. That would be nice otherwise I may skip it. Great ideas you put into the software Cakewalk but too many ignored issues from previous verisons of the DAW to continue using it. The plug ins for Sonar seem to work great but the biggest problem for me was rewire so I went with a program that I know has amazing rewire support. 

Interesting question. I'd imagine any of the standalone stuff like Z3ta would be fine and any effects that are simple plug ins should be fine. Pro Channel stuff would probably be out. IDK... open Ableton and see if you can navigate to the Cakewalk folder for the plugs/instruments. I might give this a try myself when I install the Ableton Lite thingy that I just got.

Most plugins are usable. Obviously the older DXi plugins (Pentagon etc.) will not be very usable (or even been seen) outside Sonar. Most VST instruments (like Dimension Pro, Rapture, Studio Instruments etc. will work (exeption is TruePianos because this version is tied to Sonar until you "unlock" it by buying the full version). Most FX plugins will work also (there are a few exceptions but I am not sure which ones - TL64 and TS-64 if my mind don't deceive me, but not much). Pro Channel stuff is out, because they are no "true" VST plugins (I guess Cakewalk took a "sortcut" around VST protocols to improve performance and multi-use).

I wonder... does Session Drummer run elsewhere or does it need to be hosted by Sonar? I don't think I've ever seen it used in anything other than Sonar in my intertube journeys. This is actually a very interesting thread/question. Might result in a list of what does and doesn't work outside of Sonar.

ProChannel is actually a VST and conforms to the VST2.4 standard. It's just implemented in a way that locks it to SONAR so that it can't be used in other hosts.

That's the case with just about every DAW that makes plugins that are packaged along in the sale.

to the OP:
Just have Live scan the location where the various SONAR VST and VSTi are located and see what works.

 Yes you can. As stated above, just point your other DAW to where your Vst plugins are in Sonar. I'm using Studio One v2 as my only other DAW, and after specifying the location for the Vsts, they show up in Studio One's Browser - some of them, that is. I tried each one by dragging & dropping them into tracks, etc. Things like Zeta, Dim Pro, Rapture, and all 4 of the S1 instruments showed up. Also things like the Vocal Channel and a few others. Some that show up, but don't work will produce a message like 'This is specific to & can only be used in Sonar or Cakewalk' or something like that. True Pianos is one of those that I remember seeing that for - probably because it's a sample teaser that's included exclusively for & with Cake.

And of course DX plugins wont work because Studio One doesn't support DX plugins.
On the other hand if you have SONY programs they will support DX plugins, Sound Forge, Vegas, Acid Pro etc

Okay, so the specific question was never really answered. The question was, "Will Session Drummer work in other DAWs?" None of the answers referenced Session Drummer specifically.
 
I'm thinking the answer is No. I'm using Studio One 2 and it doesn't see Session Drummer. Many of the other plugins from Sonar work fine but I fear Session Drummer is one of those that will not travel.
 
Too bad about that. I like it. Oh well. If anyone knows a way to allow its use, well, wouldn't that be great!

Session Drummer is an add-on that is tied to Sonar. This was addressed in an earlier thread and was found not to be available outside of Sonar.

Session Drummer 3 shows up in both Live and Reaper.
You should be able use any of the VSTs that Sonar installs in the vstplugins folder without problems. You probably won't be able to use the Pro-Channel plugins unless they are also installed as regular VSTs (Overloud does this).
Live can only use a single plugin folder, I think Reaper can use multiple folders like Sonar. I have a few plugins that got installed in different locations (I probably clicked ok before looking at where they were getting put), I just made a separate VST64 folder that I copied everything to and point both Live and Reaper at that. Everything shows up and works fine in both DAWs.
Pro-Tools and Reason do not support VST but they do support ReWire so you can use your VSTis in both if you use Reaper as an intermediary. I could be wrong but my understanding is that if you want to use Reason as a rewire master you need to use the ReBirth Input Machine. You can also configure Reaper to act like an audio interface so you can even use effect plugins in addition to instruments.
So the answer is yes, you should be able to use any VST Sonar installs in virtually any DAW. You can't normally bitbridge 32 bit plugins into a 64 bit DAW (Sonar does that automatically) but if you install everything with the same bittyness (64/32), that shouldn't be a problem. Some DAWs may take a bit more fiddling to get them to work (Pro-Tools, Reason) but that's just a matter of wiring.
I'm sitting here playing with the OldZepKit in Live as we speak.