I think this update of Sonar gives incredible value for money.

...wicked
Srsly, if you really wanted a Producer upgrade for $50 lousy bucks then you should just go get Garageband and play in the little kids sandbox. Back in the day this kind of rig would've set you back thousands of dollars. It's the core center application of your studio and you think it's worth $50? Get outta here! If I was a Cake employee I'd be flat out insulted. If you don't the value in what you're getting for $150 then you don't deserve the software in the first place.  

My favorite response so far in this string! Totally on point.

$149?  You can't buy an ounce of weed for that.

I think it gets to people when someone acts in such a way that their concerns are presented as being so much more important then the rest of us. This is not to say that an individual's concerns aren't important, but that need to be considered in terms of the community. It can be galling to listen to complaints about minor issues, usually personal workflow related, talked about as if the end of the world is near. You get the narcissistic vibe from it.
 
 

Beepster, let me suggest a different approach: track down the things that "don't work" in X2 so you don't feel limited by that version. For example there's another thread you started about how bouncing doesn't work, but it was pilot error. There may be other instances like that. X2 had been stable for me and while there were a few non-repeatable bugs (pretty much all software has those), nothing was a show-stopper or prevented me from getting serious work done with everything from narration to remixing to recording new songs to audio-for-video.
 
I was at a conference where someone said the same basic thing about "They should fix all the bugs in X2" and I was curious what bugs he was experiencing. So I asked him to name the top three bugs that impaired his ability to get work done, and he mentioned the same bug that I've experienced--the audio engine flips out sometimes when looping sections for very long periods of time and moving the loop points. That was the only bug he could recall. I suggested he stop the transport occasionally (like every few minutes) and then restart, a workaround that worked for me. Hopefully it will work for him, but his not being able to recall any bugs other than that one was interesting.
 
The other semi-consistent bug I experienced was applying to V-Vocal to individual clips in a take layer, but I did that rarely so the bug hardly ever surfaced. I either waited until the comping was done before applying V-Vocal to specific sections, or just pulled the clip into its own track and applied V-Vocal. Again, no huge deal, and those are the only bugs I can recall in my own X2 setup.
 
Rather than focusing on obtaining a custom version of Sonar, which isn't going to happen because X3's product line has already been finalized, I think you'd be better off quantifying what are the most problematic elements for you with X2 and fixing those or finding workarounds. In the hundreds of hours I put into X2, nothing was serious enough to prevent me from getting work done faster than I could with other DAWs.

Thanks Craig for being the voice of reason. I just deleted (before submitting) a post where I was going to give someone a spray for constant whinging.

I remember a time in X1 where I was ready to bite off my own arm and slap myself silly with it, out of frustration. My constant posting and whinging really got up a few peoples noses, to the point where, I think it "backwoods" called me a pest. To be honest I had become one. I'd stopped focussing on solutions and just kept using the forum to vent with no help in sight. Venting at the very people who could be helping me. Cakewalk weren't anywhere near as proactive on the forum 3 years ago as they are today.

Eventually things improved and since then I hope I've stopped being the pest I'd become.

+1 for a cheaper plugin stripped version...
 
The best would be to be able to choose the plugins wanted for the upgrade and have price set according to your choice..But it's not a very "good business" practice..

Well this has turned into quite the dog pile since I logged out. I will respond to two of the negative posts that particularly stood out to me and leave the rest because they are either a) coming from people whom I consider good posters and friends and have shown respect in their replies without resorting to hyperbole or personal attacks despite disagreeing with me and b)  coming from people who consistently take every chance they get to attack people while offering very little to the forum in the way of help or nurturing the community. To the former I respect your opinions and don't begrudge you them and hope we can continue on in our usual friendly interactions and exchange of ideas. To the latter I have no time for people who resort to blatant attacks that have no substance and you have proven again and again that is all you know how to do which is why I have and will continue to ignore your posts.
 
That said this little gem is WAY off base...
 

...wicked
Srsly, if you really wanted a Producer upgrade for $50 lousy bucks then you should just go get Garageband and play in the little kids sandbox. Back in the day this kind of rig would've set you back thousands of dollars. It's the core center application of your studio and you think it's worth $50? Get outta here! If I was a Cake employee I'd be flat out insulted. If you don't the value in what you're getting for $150 then you don't deserve the software in the first place. 
 

Who are you to question my professionalism? I have playing music for 25 years and for many of those years people did indeed pay me. I have toured countless miles on multiple continents in some of the dingiest bars up to the most prestigious venues. I have recorded multiple albums in top end studios that were subsequently released and were rather popular in the niche genre markets I was a part of to the point they sold out and at least one album is now a sought after collectors item. I have played with and been respected by musicians of many styles and always got asked back again. I have taught people music from SCRATCH who now have gone on from not even knowing how to hold their instruments to getting hired into bands and playing gigs within a couple months. Any band I've been a part of for longer than a few one off gigs or acted as a hired gun I inevitable became the main composer/musical director. When I first started recording on another DAW I have absolutely no experience aside from what I had seen the engineers do when I was in the big studios (which was very little due to time constraints). I had no manual for my DAW, no internet forums to turn to and no help from anyone around me aside from occasionally bribing a couple of my engineer friends with beer to give me  tips on stuff like mic placement. I produced an entire album that way that everyone who listened to it were shocked at the quality and I even had a guy who ran a top boutique mastering house offer to master it for FREE without even meeting me because he liked it so much. It was all done with my ears and intuition as a musician. I also used that same machine to record hundreds of other recordings that are waiting to be mixed. BTW that DAW never even hiccuped. Not once. This is not bragging or oneupsmanship. It is fact. I rarely discuss such things because I know there are other serious pros on here that have done far more than me so it would be egotistical and presumptuous to think I'm somehow better because of where I've been and what I've done like you have. Also unlike you I have respect for those who haven't done as much as me which is why I have chosen to pursue teaching music. I enjoy watching people grow musically and would NEVER insult or demean someone who's trying to learn. That is absolutely disgusting behavior and debases the entire profession.
 
You have also used flawed logic and have twisted my words to mean what you WANT them to mean to support your argument. I want to pay for a patch. Not the deluxe X3 bundle... and that's what it is... a bundle basically wrapped around a patch of things that should have already been fixed. If you went and bought a brand new mixing board from a  company that had a track record for quality and repairing any defects found but then got it home and half the pots were wired backwards, buttons would intermittently fail, faders were scratchy, the internal routing was all wrong would you not expect that company to at least TRY to correct the issue? You did your research. It should have been a sound investment. Yet when you call them they send you a couple extra buttons and some duct tape and say "we're working on it... we'll get back to you. Use this for now". Okay, they're working on it. Cool. Just use the parts of the board that are working and avoid the rest or use the extra buttons and duct tape to figure out workarounds. A few months go by with no response and you check in. "We're working on it... here's some more duct tape". Uh... sure. Few more months... they aren't returning your calls. You stay optimistic because the warranty is still good. It's a good company. They wouldn't outright screw you would they? A year has now passed, your warranty is about to expire and you know the model is about to be discontinued so you start asking questions. You start getting a little frustrated. You get told "Don't you worry! GREAT THINGS ARE COMING!! YOU'RE GONNA LOVE IT". Uh... okay. Shortly after your warranty expires and the new model is released. Any questions or complaints are met with "THIS NEW BOARD IS A GREAT VALUE!!! YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY WE DID THIS FOR YOU!!! WHY AREN'T YOU HAPPY??!!" Okay, sure. It looks nice but you already bought a board. You don't need another board. You need the one you researched and DID buy for YOUR needs to work. You've got other gear to buy and bills to pay. "THIS NEW BOARD CAN BE CONTROLLED WITH A KAZOO!! IT CAN LEVITATE!!! IT'LL NURSE YOUR YOUNG CHILDREN IF YOU UPGRADE TO THE LACTATION ATTACHMENT!!! IT'S AN OUTSTANDING VALUE!!!" What the hell do I need that stuff for??! "YOU AREN'T HAPPY!!! YOU MUST BE A TROLL!! WE'RE CALLING THE POLICE TO MAKE SURE YOU DIDN'T STEAL THE BOARD!!!" Whaaat???!!!! "OKAY, THE COPS SAID YOU DID IN FACT PAY FOR THE BOARD BUT WHY AREN'T YOU HAPPY???!!! WHY ARE YOU TROLLING US??!?!! WE DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS ANYMORE!!"
 
Doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, does it? You'd probably not be too darned happy, would you? This was indeed a hyperbolic dramatization of mine and other users experience with X2 but every part of it directly relates to my real life experience this past year with Cakewalk. My first post in this thread was factual, truthful and on point to the subject matter. Andrew decided to yet again take a jab at me with bizarre marketing logic after he had completely ignored a reply I had made to him the night earlier in regards to the bizarre pricing scheme surrounding X3 Studio and essentials because I have indeed been contemplating getting Studio but there are downsides to such a cross/downgrade and frankly I have no idea whether they fixed the crap I needed them to.
 
I have run multiple businesses on top of my musical endeavors and I'll tell ya... I would not approach an upset customer that way unless I was intentionally trying to drive them off... and frankly if that was his intention he may very well have been successful. His responses only agitated me further and fueled the mob that has grown here who are using the flawed logic he introduced to the conversation while ignoring what I have actually said. Anyone who is familiar with my posts knows that 99% of the time I stick to asking for or providing help/ideas. The Bakers can verify themselves by looking at my post history that I am NOT a malcontent NOR a troll and they can check my account to see that I am NOT a pirate. Both of which another Baker did a few weeks back before the X3 release when I POLITELY suggested I would pay for an X2 patch after the all the new release hooplah died down. He did this because apparently everyone on the forum who has experienced trouble don't own a legit copy, just like to complain or are outright lying about their problems. That was rather insulting and presumptuous considering how patient I had been up until that point about this entire fiasco. It is extremely disappointing and not at all the treatment I have seen them give to others. Even REAL trolls, pirates and troublemakers seem to get more respect than I have.
 
As for you... you have broken the TOS and shown very little class or professionalism in your post. Almost all of the professional musicians and engineers I've known and/or worked with in my life would never say such childish and insulting things to another musician and the ones that do tend to find themselves out of work very quickly. It is called "professional" courtesy.
 
Now that that's out of the way I wish you success in your "professional" career but if this is the way you talk to people I have absolutely no interest in anything you have to say again.
 
Goodbye.

And now for the positive, constructive and helpful comment from a guy that actually has some influence and NEVER lowers himself to insults or bashing from what I've seen. This post is factual, on point without a hint of marketing double speak, innuendo or condescension. Some of you could learn from this man. I know I have.
 

Anderton
Beepster, let me suggest a different approach: track down the things that "don't work" in X2 so you don't feel limited by that version. For example there's another thread you started about how bouncing doesn't work, but it was pilot error. There may be other instances like that. X2 had been stable for me and while there were a few non-repeatable bugs (pretty much all software has those), nothing was a show-stopper or prevented me from getting serious work done with everything from narration to remixing to recording new songs to audio-for-video.
 
I was at a conference where someone said the same basic thing about "They should fix all the bugs in X2" and I was curious what bugs he was experiencing. So I asked him to name the top three bugs that impaired his ability to get work done, and he mentioned the same bug that I've experienced--the audio engine flips out sometimes when looping sections for very long periods of time and moving the loop points. That was the only bug he could recall. I suggested he stop the transport occasionally (like every few minutes) and then restart, a workaround that worked for me. Hopefully it will work for him, but his not being able to recall any bugs other than that one was interesting.
 
The other semi-consistent bug I experienced was applying to V-Vocal to individual clips in a take layer, but I did that rarely so the bug hardly ever surfaced. I either waited until the comping was done before applying V-Vocal to specific sections, or just pulled the clip into its own track and applied V-Vocal. Again, no huge deal, and those are the only bugs I can recall in my own X2 setup.
 
Rather than focusing on obtaining a custom version of Sonar, which isn't going to happen because X3's product line has already been finalized, I think you'd be better off quantifying what are the most problematic elements for you with X2 and fixing those or finding workarounds. In the hundreds of hours I put into X2, nothing was serious enough to prevent me from getting work done faster than I could with other DAWs.

Craig, first off I will preface this by saying that a year and a half ago I had no idea who you were or that guys like you existed. Watching your vids, reading your articles and seeing you interact here on this forum has been educational and inspirational. I do not say such things lightly. I have learned a ridiculous amount about the "new" audio production from you and in that short year and a half have gained tremendous respect for your work. I no longer look at my DAW as simply a multi track recorder/mixing board. It is now as much an creative instrument to me as my guitars. I rewatched the Advanced Workshop series again recently and again drew an insane amount of new concepts and ideas from them and am sure if I watch it again in a few months I will find even more gems I didn't fully understand this time around. I think one of the best things to have come out of all the chaos of the past year at Cake is for them to have you on board with the knew owners. Hopefully they let your input mold the future of Cakewalk because I could not think of anyone more suited to the task.
 
Not sucking up or practicing hero worship here. Just stating fact and giving praise where it is due.
 
Now that the gooshy stuff is out of the way... you are correct that in that thread you are referring to there was indeed pilot error in play and I popped a little. That was a result of already being frustrated by this thread and having studied and wrangled with that problem for a few days only to have it fail when I actually tried to do it. Normally I would try to put all the burden of guilt on myself in a situation like that until it was absolutely verified something was indeed wrong with the program. It just seems that this happens any time I try to do anything beyond the absolute basics despite combing the manual and watching/reading everything I can get my hands on. The manual entry I had dug up was indeed missing a very crucial step but I could have dug further into my various notes, additional guides or other resources until I found the flaw in my approach. Fortunately the forum pulled my butt out of the fire before gear started becoming airborne (thanks again, jb). So yeah, I screwed up out of impatience and frustration there and intend to add a "solved" to the title once I'm done typing this.
 
As far as the "bugs" and issues I've experienced they are intermittent yet consistent and have all been verified by other users many times. If you saw my manual notes you'd see the plethora of additional notes detailing features I tried as described in the manual that failed along with any possible work arounds I had found. I will keep it to the most persistent and work deterring problems I have. I have detailed these many times before on the forum...
 
1) The selection bug: Starting in X2 it seems in some projects after a while this problem slowly creeps in and entrenches itself into the project getting worse and worse as work progresses. When selecting various data in various areas of the GUI (particularly the Clips Pane and PRV but also in other areas as well) other random data will get selected as well. For example... in the clips pane I may select one clip to edit. What will happen is other completely unrelated clips will get selected as well. No matter how many times you clear the selection and reselect the desired clip those same extra clips get selected. Any changes you make to the desired clip will now affect the other clips. You can't move, trim, splice, apply effects or fades without screwing up the other data. Many times these extra clips are off screen so by the time you realize it you may have already made many moves which you either have to undo or correct... except when you try to make those corrections all the clips are still linked somehow. Even worse is when you save the project with the unwanted changes. The clips were not accidentally linked through any user input. They just start getting stuck together and as time goes on the behavior becomes more widespread to where you almost can't select anything without unrelated clips getting selected as well.
 
A couple workarounds are a) using Ctrl Click to deselect the unwanted selections BUT sometimes this doesn't work, especially if the bug has really invaded the project and will sometimes cause crashes if you keep trying. You also have to double check every single clip  in the program every time you make a move or you might miss one. Not very efficient. The other workaround, and the one that I use on every project now whether the bug has surfaced or not as a preventative measure is to lock ALL Pos/Data of ALL the clips/tracks until I need to make an edit. This guarantees nothing is getting moved unless it is intended however it is an enormous workflow killer having lock and unlock stuff as you edit. In the PRV or other areas I haven't found any suitable workarounds yet so I just have to deal with it but fortunately it's not as common and deselect/reselect seems to work a little better despite the occasional freeze up.
 
2) Audiosnap: This just not work well. The transients flicker off and on like Christmas lights, disappear, give false statuses, refuse to move randomly for no reason then start moving again. This makes it extremely difficult to work with and sometimes it just refuses to work at all. Also it doesn't seem to want to save in the middle of a session. It's an all or nothing prospect. I was working on a very lengthy track that required a lot of finite adjustments. I spent a whole day working on it and ended up saving my progress and shut down for the night. When I opened the project the next day it was unusable. Totally corrupted to the point absolutely nothing could be done. No playback, screens spilling over into other screens, big blocks of pixels popping up everywhere all ended up in hard crashes. It was trashed. The only workaround to these issues is accept that I just can't stretch things as I intend if the program decides not to play nice leading to highly compromised end results for my efforts and any changes must be bounced before saving and closing the program. Even then it's dicey.
 
3) Graphical glitches: Just constant graphical glitches. False status, disappearing waves, notes, transients, parameters, flashing screens, track control boxes freaking out, on and on. I know it's not my system because almost every video I have seen using X2, including the Cake produced ones show the same graphical errors. The only exception was FBBs Effects Workshop. Not sure if he edited those out or he just has the best system in the world. It is all very distracting.
 
4) Intermittent or broken controls: Sometimes I have to press buttons multiple times to get them to work if they work at all. There have been many times where I was trying something new and the buttons wouldn't respond so I thought it was a broken feature but then later I'd try it again and they'd magically work. Some buttons are just borked. Like the MSR buttons on the Take Lanes. They have never worked reliably for me and I avoid them at all costs to the point that I mute my clips instead of muting lanes. There are other weird input gremlins I've experienced as well like my QWERTY shortcuts causing different behavior than the associated button commands and vice versa. All this just pops up on occasion but again it's distracting and keeps me second guessing myself and having to refer to the manual or my notes just to make sure I'm not making a mistake.
 
So those a re the main issues. I have experienced other commonly reported stuff like the Looping issue you mentioned. None of this stuff happens consistently (except for some of the audiosnap weirdness) but it all happens enough and in combination to lead to a syndrome of frustration, paranoia and diminished productivity. If these issues just happened with a little less frequency I could tolerate them but it seems like every few actions I take SOMETHING minor happens. It's like death by a thousand paper cuts. I however have very few hard crashes compared to X1 but plenty of little freeze ups and engine stops for seemingly no reason. I've started keeping the Performance Module in my Control Bar to see if there are any spikes but I am hardly using any resources at all. It's a heavy duty system with a clean windows 7 install and very little extra added aside from my audio stuff. I've tweaked it as per Cake tech supports suggestions, I bought a modern and compatible interface, I've been using MSE for my AV and have now started disabling it while working, I am not connected to the internet, I have run scans, checked power features, everything and nothing will get these annoying little glitches out of my hair.
 
If I was already proficient with the program or advanced digital recording concepts it would be a little more bearable but as someone who is just learning this software and all the more modern functions it has really gotten in my way.
 
You are right though... it is possible to get things done but it is slooooooow going. I will not give up and after I do a review of everything I've learned this past year I am wiping the system, calling tech support and starting from scratch to hopefully get some better performance out of it.
 
Anyway, thanks for chiming in and I hope this has shown you where I'm coming from. I think all this stuff is very cool and Sonar is very cutting edge but it does have some issues. I just don't like having company representatives act like I'm crazy for being disappointed about those issues. I give credit where credit is due and give Sonar and Cake praise for many aspects of the product and their business. I won't however pretend like all the issues I mentioned above don't exist or that they don't interfere with my work. If we all did that nothing would get fixed. 
 
Cheers and take care.

Beepster
And now for the positive, constructive and helpful comment from a guy that actually has some influence and NEVER lowers himself to insults or bashing from what I've seen. This post is factual, on point without a hint of marketing double speak, innuendo or condescension. Some of you could learn from this man. I know I have.
 

Anderton
Beepster, let me suggest a different approach: track down the things that "don't work" in X2 so you don't feel limited by that version. For example there's another thread you started about how bouncing doesn't work, but it was pilot error. There may be other instances like that. X2 had been stable for me and while there were a few non-repeatable bugs (pretty much all software has those), nothing was a show-stopper or prevented me from getting serious work done with everything from narration to remixing to recording new songs to audio-for-video.
 
I was at a conference where someone said the same basic thing about "They should fix all the bugs in X2" and I was curious what bugs he was experiencing. So I asked him to name the top three bugs that impaired his ability to get work done, and he mentioned the same bug that I've experienced--the audio engine flips out sometimes when looping sections for very long periods of time and moving the loop points. That was the only bug he could recall. I suggested he stop the transport occasionally (like every few minutes) and then restart, a workaround that worked for me. Hopefully it will work for him, but his not being able to recall any bugs other than that one was interesting.
 
The other semi-consistent bug I experienced was applying to V-Vocal to individual clips in a take layer, but I did that rarely so the bug hardly ever surfaced. I either waited until the comping was done before applying V-Vocal to specific sections, or just pulled the clip into its own track and applied V-Vocal. Again, no huge deal, and those are the only bugs I can recall in my own X2 setup.
 
Rather than focusing on obtaining a custom version of Sonar, which isn't going to happen because X3's product line has already been finalized, I think you'd be better off quantifying what are the most problematic elements for you with X2 and fixing those or finding workarounds. In the hundreds of hours I put into X2, nothing was serious enough to prevent me from getting work done faster than I could with other DAWs.

Craig, first off I will preface this by saying that a year and a half ago I had no idea who you were or that guys like you existed. Watching your vids, reading your articles and seeing you interact here on this forum has been educational and inspirational. I do not say such things lightly. I have learned a ridiculous amount about the "new" audio production from you and in that short year and a half have gained tremendous respect for your work. I no longer look at my DAW as simply a multi track recorder/mixing board. It is now as much an creative instrument to me as my guitars. I rewatched the Advanced Workshop series again recently and again drew an insane amount of new concepts and ideas from them and am sure if I watch it again in a few months I will find even more gems I didn't fully understand this time around. I think one of the best things to have come out of all the chaos of the past year at Cake is for them to have you on board with the knew owners. Hopefully they let your input mold the future of Cakewalk because I could not think of anyone more suited to the task.
 
Not sucking up or practicing hero worship here. Just stating fact and giving praise where it is due.
 
Now that the gooshy stuff is out of the way... you are correct that in that thread you are referring to there was indeed pilot error in play and I popped a little. That was a result of already being frustrated by this thread and having studied and wrangled with that problem for a few days only to have it fail when I actually tried to do it. Normally I would try to put all the burden of guilt on myself in a situation like that until it was absolutely verified something was indeed wrong with the program. It just seems that this happens any time I try to do anything beyond the absolute basics despite combing the manual and watching/reading everything I can get my hands on. The manual entry I had dug up was indeed missing a very crucial step but I could have dug further into my various notes, additional guides or other resources until I found the flaw in my approach. Fortunately the forum pulled my butt out of the fire before gear started becoming airborne (thanks again, jb). So yeah, I screwed up out of impatience and frustration there and intend to add a "solved" to the title once I'm done typing this.
 
As far as the "bugs" and issues I've experienced they are intermittent yet consistent and have all been verified by other users many times. If you saw my manual notes you'd see the plethora of additional notes detailing features I tried as described in the manual that failed along with any possible work arounds I had found. I will keep it to the most persistent and work deterring problems I have. I have detailed these many times before on the forum...
 
1) The selection bug: Starting in X2 it seems in some projects after a while this problem slowly creeps in and entrenches itself into the project getting worse and worse as work progresses. When selecting various data in various areas of the GUI (particularly the Clips Pane and PRV but also in other areas as well) other random data will get selected as well. For example... in the clips pane I may select one clip to edit. What will happen is other completely unrelated clips will get selected as well. No matter how many times you clear the selection and reselect the desired clip those same extra clips get selected. Any changes you make to the desired clip will now affect the other clips. You can't move, trim, splice, apply effects or fades without screwing up the other data. Many times these extra clips are off screen so by the time you realize it you may have already made many moves which you either have to undo or correct... except when you try to make those corrections all the clips are still linked somehow. Even worse is when you save the project with the unwanted changes. The clips were not accidentally linked through any user input. They just start getting stuck together and as time goes on the behavior becomes more widespread to where you almost can't select anything without unrelated clips getting selected as well.
 
A couple workarounds are a) using Ctrl Click to deselect the unwanted selections BUT sometimes this doesn't work, especially if the bug has really invaded the project and will sometimes cause crashes if you keep trying. You also have to double check every single clip  in the program every time you make a move or you might miss one. Not very efficient. The other workaround, and the one that I use on every project now whether the bug has surfaced or not as a preventative measure is to lock ALL Pos/Data of ALL the clips/tracks until I need to make an edit. This guarantees nothing is getting moved unless it is intended however it is an enormous workflow killer having lock and unlock stuff as you edit. In the PRV or other areas I haven't found any suitable workarounds yet so I just have to deal with it but fortunately it's not as common and deselect/reselect seems to work a little better despite the occasional freeze up.
 
2) Audiosnap: This just not work well. The transients flicker off and on like Christmas lights, disappear, give false statuses, refuse to move randomly for no reason then start moving again. This makes it extremely difficult to work with and sometimes it just refuses to work at all. Also it doesn't seem to want to save in the middle of a session. It's an all or nothing prospect. I was working on a very lengthy track that required a lot of finite adjustments. I spent a whole day working on it and ended up saving my progress and shut down for the night. When I opened the project the next day it was unusable. Totally corrupted to the point absolutely nothing could be done. No playback, screens spilling over into other screens, big blocks of pixels popping up everywhere all ended up in hard crashes. It was trashed. The only workaround to these issues is accept that I just can't stretch things as I intend if the program decides not to play nice leading to highly compromised end results for my efforts and any changes must be bounced before saving and closing the program. Even then it's dicey.
 
3) Graphical glitches: Just constant graphical glitches. False status, disappearing waves, notes, transients, parameters, flashing screens, track control boxes freaking out, on and on. I know it's not my system because almost every video I have seen using X2, including the Cake produced ones show the same graphical errors. The only exception was FBBs Effects Workshop. Not sure if he edited those out or he just has the best system in the world. It is all very distracting.
 
4) Intermittent or broken controls: Sometimes I have to press buttons multiple times to get them to work if they work at all. There have been many times where I was trying something new and the buttons wouldn't respond so I thought it was a broken feature but then later I'd try it again and they'd magically work. Some buttons are just borked. Like the MSR buttons on the Take Lanes. They have never worked reliably for me and I avoid them at all costs to the point that I mute my clips instead of muting lanes. There are other weird input gremlins I've experienced as well like my QWERTY shortcuts causing different behavior than the associated button commands and vice versa. All this just pops up on occasion but again it's distracting and keeps me second guessing myself and having to refer to the manual or my notes just to make sure I'm not making a mistake.
 
So those a re the main issues. I have experienced other commonly reported stuff like the Looping issue you mentioned. None of this stuff happens consistently (except for some of the audiosnap weirdness) but it all happens enough and in combination to lead to a syndrome of frustration, paranoia and diminished productivity. If these issues just happened with a little less frequency I could tolerate them but it seems like every few actions I take SOMETHING minor happens. It's like death by a thousand paper cuts. I however have very few hard crashes compared to X1 but plenty of little freeze ups and engine stops for seemingly no reason. I've started keeping the Performance Module in my Control Bar to see if there are any spikes but I am hardly using any resources at all. It's a heavy duty system with a clean windows 7 install and very little extra added aside from my audio stuff. I've tweaked it as per Cake tech supports suggestions, I bought a modern and compatible interface, I've been using MSE for my AV and have now started disabling it while working, I am not connected to the internet, I have run scans, checked power features, everything and nothing will get these annoying little glitches out of my hair.
 
If I was already proficient with the program or advanced digital recording concepts it would be a little more bearable but as someone who is just learning this software and all the more modern functions it has really gotten in my way.
 
You are right though... it is possible to get things done but it is slooooooow going. I will not give up and after I do a review of everything I've learned this past year I am wiping the system, calling tech support and starting from scratch to hopefully get some better performance out of it.
 
Anyway, thanks for chiming in and I hope this has shown you where I'm coming from. I think all this stuff is very cool and Sonar is very cutting edge but it does have some issues. I just don't like having company representatives act like I'm crazy for being disappointed about those issues. I give credit where credit is due and give Sonar and Cake praise for many aspects of the product and their business. I won't however pretend like all the issues I mentioned above don't exist or that they don't interfere with my work. If we all did that nothing would get fixed. 
 
Cheers and take care.

Congratulations on completely derailing this thread. If you have specific issues, you should post them on their own thread or call technical support to get help. This is not the appropriate place but you seem intent on hijacking this thread. I am locking this thread. Please don't take this as a green light to go ahead and hijack other threads. Please stay on topic.