So yeah, please do report back on what you find.

After getting more into the X3 and the V-Studio 700 I cant get access the mic pre and Direct mix Controls (they are greyed out).  Everything Works in X2 though.
 

 
 

Very odd.

I'd always assumed that panel was part of the vs700 install, instead of part of Sonar per se.
 
Do you have the standalone control panel, that you can launch outside of Sonar? If so, what happens when you launch that?
 

I can get to the I/O editor as a stand alone.. but cant Control it from the console within  X3

Hmm. That's a pain in the butt.

Sounds more like a driver setting problem, after installing X3 you have to go into preferences and reset some of the settings that may have changed with a new install.
 
The fact that the Mic Pre section is "grayed out" indicates that a driver setting is not correct for the Mic Pre. I've had that happen before and after selecting the right driver it started back working.
 
Also a totally fresh install should be done when installing a new version as it irons out overwrite bugs.
 
 

I have gone through and reinstalled the program and disabled all the drivers... then re-enabled them.  This has fixed things.
What is to be noted is that everything was exactly the same as in X2... driver setups etc.
 

ok x3 running here.
 
First off I opened the project I started on x2a this afternoon.
 
Seeing what happenned to Gary I reinstalled the drivers before x3 and everything worked fine.
 
So, I pressed play and the playback was IMMEDIATE. I mean like I've never seen before. I messed with the transport buttons in ways that no one will ever use it (I mean the "crash mother f***er " way) and it followed everything without any glitches.
 
I banked through track/bus/track-select like a 3 years old discovering the tv remote and everything was instantaneous. All this while playback.
 
I could not believe it and then POW!!! Sonar crashed!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
 
I closed it and while trying to reopen it I got the classic "no audio device corresponding... bla bla" showed. I restarted the computer while returning to reality...
 
Then, I openned the same project again and replaced the studio devil guitar amp plugins (x7) with the included TH2 producer (x7) and I'm recording flawlessly for more than an hour.
 
So I did no fancy recording/editing tricks so far but the basics are really improved. The responsiveness is night and day. Hope my crash was due to the studio devil plugin, looks like it so far...
 
Will try the comping feature tomorrow, looks pretty nice...
 
Two things that I can tell so far:
 
1. The display delay still exist but just for the upper row (ah yeah I installed the 1.2 console plugin, not sure if I should have...) the lower row change as fast as the faders do.
 
2. This one appeared when I reinstalled X2a a month ago, so there's no connection with X3
If someone can help that would be nice... I don't know what happened but the prochannels controls are all messed up.... the first row show BLANK-WET/DRY-OUTPUT-RATIO, second row RELEASE-ATTACK-INPUT, eq first and 2nd page are inverted as well... Kinda strange and certainly unintuitive.
 
I'll tell you more when I find out but so far it is very positive and I'm really happy with the upgrade from x2a.

Just seen that the prochannels controls are mapped exactly like the sreenshot gary posted. Anybody know what happened? they usually showed in the same order as the GUI in sonar.  Not sure I like the messed up version better...