What a thread...some great reading here for sure. I started with a Fostex 4-track, graduated to a Tascam 388 mixer with built in 1/4 reels, moved up to a 16 track 1 inch rig and was in Best Buy one day and saw Cake 4. It was cheap, I bought it just to see what it was like but had no intention of really using it. Messed with it a little bit but just wasn't into breaking my old tape habits yet, so I stayed away from it. After recording my first album on the 16 track, I bought a 24 track 2 inch Tascam machine and then another shortly after. I was mixing a tune with a friend and he says "Why don't you use Cakewalk dude? It will make things so much easier!" I told him I didn't really know how to use it that well. So, he showed me what I needed to know, Cake 5 came out, so I bought it and started recording tunes. I still have the first song I ever recorded on Cake 5. :) From there, it totally blew me away and I did some beta testing for a bit and bought every version of Cake until Sonar 2.2. By this time, 3.0 had come out and it wouldn't run on Win 98 SE so I stuck with S2 until I bought a new pc running XP and bought S5, then 6, 7 and 8. I'm really happy with 8 at this time and it will take quite a lot to make me even look at 9 to be honest. My only issue for how I use Sonar is the gap I get while recording, but I found a work-around for my particular issue that fixes it completely....so I'm very happy at the moment. :)