Sonar X1 works for me!
Apologies in advance to those who are still having problems. Software is such a temperamental beast, add in all the combinations of hardware types, chipsets, and ages and forget it!
I purchased Sonar X1 Studio (I'm going to Producer at some point soon) at the end of February. I installed it, did the X1a patch, opened it and almost cried because I'd have to learn something completely new. I got the Groove 3 video, and at the same time started playing around with different things so I could pick up all things I knew how to do, just didn't know how in X1. Had a couple of minor hardware issues, mainly my own fault and switching to ASIO works much better for me.
In any case, since then, I've recorded a full live band (no vocals yet! 8 drum mics, 4 guitar tracks, and a bass track) for 4 separate songs and it's been great. I have edited clips, punched tracks, added automated faders and pans, and used a boat load of neat effects, where necessary. All things that I couldn't do when I first opened it.
I have to say, it's great. The UI is perfect, I know the keystrokes to get around fast, and I can cut a finished product way faster than ever before. The one thing I would change is allowing registered/paid users to get the tutorial videos free. It's really something that I think will help solidfy the product and get more users involved directly, I would not have gotten anything done without them!
I hope the folks that are having sw/hw issues can be rectified with X1b (or other means) soon, because this really is a good product!
Ross
Sonar X2 Producer (x64), Tascam US-1800, Alesis Q49, Behringer DI-4000, 3rd Gen Intel Core i7-3770 processor 3.40 GHz, 8GB RAM, Win8 x64