TomHelvey

I'm dreading the day I have to get a new machine, I know it's going to be a total nightmare.

There is nothing to stop you installing several versions. It doesn't take long, and can be handy to trouble shoot or deal with incompatibility issues.

Also, I am not sure if VVocal can be installed on it's own, so I think you need to choose Sonar when you do an advanced install if you want to keep it.

X3 installed along side X2 here - no issues.

Bristol_Jonesey
No version of Sonar installs "over" a previous version.
 
All versions exist side-by-side and there's very little to be gained by removing earlier versions but you DO risk losing various plugins & shared utilities so the perceived wisdom has always bee, simply install the new version and leave everything else well alone

This is what I have been doing for years. I just keep installing the newest version until I build my next machine. Then I start over and only keep maybe the last version and go from there.
 
The only reason I didn't have Sonar 7 and 8 installed on my newest machine is because I went total 64bit and just didn't install all those old 32bit plugs.
 
Right now I have all Sonar X versions install on my machine.

Bristol_Jonesey
you DO risk losing various plugins & shared utilities so the perceived wisdom has always bee, simply install the new version and leave everything else well alone

A PC builder advised me to uninstall old versions and all my 32-bit plugins and synths stopped working. The only solution was to reinstall Windows and all music software. Took me 6 days. Having said that I now have a clean machine and the pain is (hopefully) over....
 
M

I just installed X3 last evening and already had X2 on my machine. I appreciated the ease of installation with only needing to open one of the many downloads and it self extracted the rest. Nicely done!! I was also impressed and delighted to see that X3  picked up all my X2 plugins and projects without having to do anything......very seamless and smooth.

+ 1 on a multi-install setup - I also have X1, X2 and X3 installed with no issues.   However, I do have copies of the Shared Utilities folders from X1 and X2 should I want to use them in their "delivered" states.   Funny though, I really never have the desire to open either one.    
 

Be aware that the X3 install will update the Cakewalk Plugin Manager that is also used by X2.
 
This does not seem to cause issues - just be aware that plugin management in X2 will use the X3 version of it.
 
Bob Bone