Hey you guys are fantastic and I'm really apologetic for not scrolling through the thousand posts that I've missed before posting this but I thought maybe one more post about updating wouldn't hurt.  What's been going on?  How's Platinum treating everyone?
 
See I only come here when I'm in trouble and the past year or two Sonar has been rockin... smooth sailing.  Not a glitch.  But I'm still on X3e.  I would be on X3e for the rest of my life, but... I'm migrating to a new computer and figure I should probably update everything at some point.
 
I bought Sonar Platinum lifetime updates last summer when they had the sale but haven't installed it yet.  I don't even think I've downloaded it.  I guess I'm also biting the bullet and switching over to Win10 because I fear if I don't do it now I'll be forced to do it later for one reason or another.  Have the auto-updates killed anyone yet?
 
Is there anything I should know about this switch?  Any reason not to?  Is Platinum in it's current state going to be very foreign to me or is it still mostly similar to X3e?  I feel very out-of-touch about what's been going on with Sonar.  Your communal knowledge and help is, as always, so much appreciated!
 
I'm using 3 x MOTU 2408mk3 cards.  VisionDAW built the new computer, I think they are making it dual-boot Win7 and Win10 because they don't trust Win10 yet:
 
DUAL Intel Xeon E5-2680 v4 - Fourteen-Core 2.4GHz Server-Class Processor
128GB DDR4 2133MHz Registered ECC Server Memory Modules (8 x 16GB)
480GB SATA II Solid State Drive (SSD) Main Drive
3 x 2TB Performance SATA III Solid State Drive (SSD)
WDC 2TB Performance Class, SATA III, 7200 RPM, 64MB Buffer Hard Drive
WDC 4TB Performance Class, SATA III, 7200 RPM, 64MB Buffer Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, 3GB, PCI-Express, DVI-D, HDMI, 3 x DP v1.4 Video Card

Well, the reality is that you'll need to switch to Windows 10 at some point. It might not be SONAR that forces the switch, but the same thing that happens to Mac people with pre-Intel Macs when they find "Your browser is not supported."
 
I waited for as long as possible before upgrading to Windows 10 because W7 and SONAR was working so smoothly. However I wish I'd done it sooner. Platinum has been working fine for me. Every now and then I'll skip a SONAR update either because I'm too busy or there's some issue that matters to me, but then I catch up the next month. I've never had to roll back, although I have from time to time to switch between a beta version and the last "official" version.
 
Although I see occasional posts from people about "SONAR crashing all the time" or whatever, I don't get it. Sometimes the answer is obvious, like ASIO4ALL interfering with something. But I believe if you have a computer that's designed for music and don't do stupid things (like install 4,000 free plug-ins written by well-meaning people living in mom's basement), problems will be rare.
 
I use SONAR almost every single day for several hours at a time and don't have stability problems in the sense of freezes/crashes. There are things that just plain don't work (like the attack time on Strip Silence), and occasional bugs (regression or otherwise), but they are sooooo much more trivial than relapping a 24-track tape head or doing window splices .
 
I highly recommend:
 

• Go for 64 bits, and avoid 32-bit plug-ins and bridging as much as possible. An all 64-bit system is best.
• Use a computer built by specialists like Studio Cat, PC Audio Labs, Sweetwater, ADK, etc. They know what they're doing.
• Don't install free stuff unless you know the source and you need it, or things you don't really need. If you have a good compressor, you have a good compressor and don't need 56 good compressors. Fewer variables = fewer things that can go wrong.
• Clean out all the resident crap. You really don't need "iPod Helper" to load every time you boot.
• Make sure all the drivers for your peripherals are up to date. Quite a few "SONAR doesn't work!!!!" posts relate to not having updated audio interface drivers.

 
Finally, I thought X3 was (and remains) a fine program. But I would not want to go back to it. Platinum has too many features that I use all the time that X3 didn't have. And I would go back to 8.5 only if doing so guaranteed world peace and humanity living in harmony...then it would be worth it. 
 
 
 

Thanks much for the response, I needed to hear this.    I can go check, check, check, check, check down your recommended list... yes to everything.
 
I waited forever to switch from 8.5 to X3e as well.  I forget what it was exactly but some chain got triggered by a sample library.  The sample library wouldn't work with that version of Kontakt, I updated Konakt and it wouldn't work with that version of Sonar (think I was 32-bit at the time), I updated Sonar and it wouldn't work with that version of Windows, I updated Windows and it wouldn't work with my computer.  Ended up buying a new computer all because of it.  So yes I'm going to Win10 hoping to avoid that this time around like you said.
 
I use Sonar probably an average of 8 hours a day every day seven days a week for the past 20 years not counting vacations.  So yes features are far less important to me than stability.