BlixYZ
After using studio one for the last few months, I REALLY appreciate the layout and look if sonar. Studio 1 is terrible looking. Particularly the track view. It's a mess.
My two cents:
Sonar is only lacking when it comes to time and pitch stretching. Studio 1 excels at this.
The only other thing is stability. I use Ctrl left and right arrow to zoom in and out -constantly. Every one in a while this caused a crash. Studio one has never crashed since I got it in December.
But sonar is a recording studio, and a great one.
The editing tools are so easy to use.
Between the included tools and the 3rd party plugins, it's damn near perfect.

Honestly, I don't want them to change much.

I've taken advantage of The  Dark Period of Great Uncertainty to become very familiar with Studio One's Song page (I've always used the Project page in parallel with Sonar). The bottom line is that while all DAWs share many features that make them seem similar superficially, the deeper you dig the more you find out what the differences are. Over the years, Studio One and Sonar have gone in quite different directions and I suspect they will diverge further in the years ahead. Ableton Live, my other mainstay, always had a different direction and has been true to it.
 
I don't think anyone who got into using a different DAW while Sonar took a rest will regret being proficient in more than one DAW. Now when I start a project, I pick the DAW based on the nature of the project, similarly to how some songs start on guitar and some on keyboards. I'm also becoming quite good at transferring projects among programs so I can take advantage of what each one does best.
 

If you read Mengs post then you would know what I am saying. He did an update maybe you should read it.
 

dappa1
New Name, a New company, equals New...

No, it doesn't!

Maybe rebranded is a better word so that people don't panic thinking it is being overhauled completely by a new company. However, updates and new implementations which they could not do under Gibson will be placed into the remerged copy of the original brand formerly known as Sonar.
 
In the future expect a blend of BandLab to put more things into it.
 
The fomerly known DAW will have some new adaptations solely because they are new coders working and adding being overseen by those who kept faithful to the original brand.

35mm

dappa1
New Name, a New company, equals New...

No, it doesn't!

Whatever son, maybe you are stuck but I am seeing things from a market perspective it will be new. However, if you want to call it old without knowing the ins and outs that's up to you lol

Bandlab will allow Sonar users to crossgrade to an old DAW for free. A familiar DAW for all those old ones who don't like change. It will not move in a new direction and because those who have a stronghold will not allow the product to flourish cos they are stuck in their ways. Is that better 35mm?

I took advantage of the crossgrade specials on Magix Samplitude, Tracktion Waveform and Presonus Studio One 3.
As Craig said they all strengths and weaknesses. Tracktion has been growing on me.
Samplitude was worth it to me just for SpectralLayer Pro and SoundForge Pro. But I'm liking this DAW with a nice staff view :)  Presonus right now I have only played with the demo version. Hoping I can get a free upgrade to version 4 by registering my product later. I got it from JRR Shop, so I'm hoping that will pan out.
Mixcraft Pro 8 I'm still on the fence with. Have to the end of March for crossgrade offer to decide.
 
Glad to see this DAW live on and I will still use it as my primary DAW, but it is nice to have options now.
 
YMMV

I am sure we will see more significant changes over time. We are bound to, but coders come and go constantly and mostly do the donkey work the project managers tell them to. The old project managers are now back and I would expect them to stay true to the long-term Sonar vision while implementing the wishes of the new owners in a fairly conservative way. What I mean is, I would expect the gradual changes that we had before under the monthly releases to continue, rather than any sudden, massive changes. There could be some issues with plugins going forward perhaps. There will be a rebranding and likely the last update that was just about ready to be rolled out will be added. But there won't be a whole new code base or anything like that anytime soon.
 
It's also tricky to work out what they could do about making it cross-platform which would ultimately be an advantage to the company - Bandlab. It would take a lot of investment, but maybe now would be the time to make that investment and perhaps release a multi-platform version next year. That could then change Sonar completely as to maintain a cross-platform product would require some changes to the code base. Although, that wouldn't be noticeable to us.

Brian Walton
There would be plenty of incentive for new customers if it is based on what we already have.

 
If that were true, then Sonar would not have been offloaded first by Roland and then by Gibson. "What we already have" was not selling enough, which is one of the main reasons why Cakewalk was closed down. 
 

The last version of Sonar is without a doubt one of the best DAWs ever made.  Why do you think we had all the outcries when Gibson decided not to invest in the continual updates?  Many of us didn't even jump ship, hoping that another company would be smart enough buy it to continue with updates....even if those updates are just to ensure compatibility with Windows releases.  
 
They don't need to change anything about the look or feel.  

Having had the chance to try a couple of other DAW's since the closure of Cakewalk, I can quite honestly say that Sonar could, with some work, be one of the best DAW's ever made. But in its present form, it's just not. Then again, I made the effort to acclimatize to the workflows of the other DAW's I tried instead of blindly groping around for a day or two and getting annoyed that things didn't work exactly the same way as in Sonar. When you do that, it's not hard to see how much greener the grass is on the other side. 
 
Sonar has an image problem in the world of DAW's. It doesn't have the "cool" factor of things like Ableton and FL Studio, which means that the kids aren't asking their parents to buy it for them. And even in the world of people who aren't looking for "hip," it has a reputation for being buggy and unstable, more so than other DAW's. All of them have bugs and oddities and workflow annoyances, but if you were to go on a forum like Gearslutz or KVR and ask "Would you guys recommend Sonar?" you'll hear a lot of replies from people saying they used to use it but jumped ship because of unworkable problems they endured. Much more so than if you ask "Would you guys recommend Studio One?" Much of that reputation is a result of the bugfest that was X1, but the fact remains that Sonar still has some very serious issues that will have to be fixed if it's ever going to get its reputation back on track. Hopefully that will happen under BandLab, and hopefully they'll prioritize the repair of the program first before they start thinking about major new features.
 
But even more so than the bugs, I think if Sonar is going to attract new users it has to be polished up a lot. There are so many areas of the program that are either outdated or confusing to a beginner. The documentation doesn't exactly help - they need a complete rewrite of the manual and a complete overhaul of the online documentation, both of which were full of inaccuracies and in a lot of ways badly organized. Many long time users of Sonar don't realize how unnecessarily confusing and frustrating it can be to a beginner, and a lot of the older users don't realize how much easier the kind of modern production techniques kids are getting into are in other DAW's. When I look at how much easier this kind of stuff is in a DAW like Bitwig, and also how much better the manual is, Sonar doesn't even begin to get a look in. It just doesn't have the design or the polish in this context. Dappa1 is right, it needs modernizing in many respects if it's going to compete in today's tough DAW market. It needs some extra pizazz to set it apart from the others and get its reputation back on track. 

Maybe I am missing it somewhere, but I still can not find any information about a permanent authorization code for Platinum for those of us using Command Center. Should I do an offline activation of my current software?