I admit, I'm not a big fan of midi, and I'm not very versed in it. I do find it useful for rhythm tracks however, for some mild quantizing... in Sonar LE I had no problems, but since upgrading to X3 I cannot get it to record any midi at all. I haven't changed my connections or routing, I've tried to duplicate the track settings as close as possible, but it just doesn't see any signal. I can hear what I'm playing, but it doesn't get recorded. The input output options are somewhat different from LE, but it looks right, yet I get nothing. Any thoughts? What am I missing?

Make sure the input is set to the device you are using to play and that input echo is enabled. Have a look at this video which covers MIDI in X1, most of which (if not all) is still relevant for X3.
 
HTH

That helped, but didn't solve... so now I can record the midi info (it was the echo switch I was missing) and I think I'm choosing the correct patch, but when I play I'm getting an echo, and it's recording the latent version of the echo. Also, in LE the midi track gave me input quantize (or snap, whatever it's called these days) options right there in the track, it's unclear to me where that same option exists in X3. I find quantize of several different kinds, but they seem to be post record.

I saw your other thread, but it might be better to continue here. I gather from the information provided that you're playing and monitoring the output of a keyboard synth; is that right? And are you monitoring the keyboard directly through an external mixer or direct connection to an amplifier?
 
The usual way to work with hardware synths in SONAR is to disable Local Control in the keyboard settings so that the synth is only responding to MIDI echoed through SONAR, and ideally you'll also want to monitor the audio through SONAR with the keyboard connected to your audio interface and an audio track with Input Echo enabled. This will introduce some latency, exacerbated slightly by the MIDI round-trip transmission delay, but it will let you apply FX to the audio in SONAR and easily record the output of the synth being played live or by previously recorded MIDI playing back.
 
The key to working this way is to have a reasonably high quality audio interface with ASIO drivers that will allow you to run a small enough audio buffer to get a round-trip audio latency under about 10ms.
 
That's probably enough for you chew on for now. Let us know if you have questions, and maybe tell us a little bit about what interface, keyboards/synths, and monitoring setup you're using.
 
At some point, you'll want to look into using software synths in SONAR, which will eliminate some latency, and may my offer more and higher-quality sounds than are available from your keyboard synth.
 
EDIT: Meant to mention that Input Quantize is in the Track Inspector (Hotkey I).