Wow, certainly a lot of ideas flying around. Thanks for all the input guys. 
 
The issues I experience are quite unpredictable and by no means disastrous, esp since X3 it has improved a huge amount. Sonar will run beautifully for an entire day, but tomorrow it may stop/start or simply close on a project (normally a large one). It will eventually behave if I keep opening it.
 
Clicking on a Bus in Console View may or may not crash the project, but then again, that only happens once a day or so, especially since I stopped using Slate VCC on the Master Bus in conjunction with Concrete Limiter (yes, all this has been written up to both Slate and Cakewalk, and acknowledged by both parties as a problem).
 
I do push the system quite hard - I mix big and elaborate, so a typical rock song might end up with 80 tracks with FX on them, 12+ busses with FX on them and lots of Sidechain, Parallel Compression and other resource-hogging setups. Normally the system is dead happy to cope with it all, even at 512 buffer on mixdown.
 
All the drivers are the latest available, and I keep a clean system with registry cleaner (CC Cleaner and ASC) and a Smart Defrag. If you know anything about RME, you'll know their drivers are second to none, even on an old card like the HDSP9652.
 
Video card is onboard - the Nvidia was causing BSDs, so out it went .
Motherboard is Intel.
Drives are all 7200 Seagates.
PSU is a 650W.
RAM is either Kingston or Corsair - can't remember :O)
 
I guess my question is, and since I run a professional studio for my income, would 8.1 make my life a few percent less stressful every day? :O)
 

A little interesting read. 
 
http://nypost.com/2014/01...dows-8-planning-for-9/

I really have not regretted moving to 8.1.  Windows 8 was a big shock for people, but 8.1 is very stable and you can work straight from the desktop.  I do use the metro start screen for launching applications.  It's quick and easy to access things, much more than the nested start menu.  There are a lot of improvements in memory management over windows 7 which some of them you can  read about here:
 
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/10/how-windows-8s-memory-management-modifications-make-for-a-better-user-experience/
 
Also if you use multiple monitors, that alone makes Windows 8 better.  No more running third party apps like "ultra-mon" to extend your task bar, it's all now built into Windows 8.
 
 
 
 
 

djjhart@aol.com
A little interesting read. 
 
http://nypost.com/2014/01...dows-8-planning-for-9/

Interesting but I don't believe it's accurate.  Redmond is on a 3 year version cycle and that isn't going to change.  There will be an 8.2 in October, and in the short term there will be an 8.1 update 1, coming out in April I believe.
 
You won't see Windows 9 until 2016 at the earliest.

LJB
I guess my question is, and since I run a professional studio for my income, would 8.1 make my life a few percent less stressful every day? :O)

I don't think anyone can definitively answer that question for you. You're trying to collect as much info and as many valid opinions as you can, which is smart, but I think the only way for you to find out for certain is to give Win8 a try. Is it possible to install Win8 on a separate drive (or even a different partition) to give it a try with your computer/audio interface?

I've been very happy with my Win8.1 setup and X3 (Studio) 
It has been very stable - even with my firewire unit (Tascam FW1884). 
To make some firewire units (the ones working better with the win7 legacy driver) work properly, it might be some tweaking. I had to do that. 
 
After doing this, I couldn't be happier. DAW's been stable, and with a few clicks here and there you won't even notice the difference between Win7 and Win8. 
 
On my laptop, I'm using W8.1 also, I tend to use the Metro GUI more there. 
I also got a Nvidia GPU (both on the lappy and DAW) and have no issues. 
The only thing I got a issue with, was a dlink wifi usb thingy, I threw it away and is only using ethernet now. (DAW)
 
I'd say, the thing you could do is to try. Even with the same HW your computer might be running smoothly and another might just not be working properly. 
 
The way I did it, was to install a new SSD for the OS with Win8, so I had my Win7 OS disc if it did not work out. 

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/better-on-the-inside-under-the-hood-of-windows-8/
 
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2007/03/pretty-vista/
 
The above links will help explain why Vista then Windows 7 and finally Windows 8 are so much better than the last version. Vista, that so many bash was the revolution. A clean break for 16 bit code. Windows 7 improved on Vista and now Windows 8 is the state of the art OS. If people don't like it its because they don't understand it. It was the same story with X1. 
 
Those that seem to always bash a new OS have no clue what goes on under the hood. All they seem to see is the GUI and nothing else. 

John
Those that seem to always bash a new OS have no clue what goes on under the hood. All they seem to see is the GUI and nothing else. 

To the normal user there isn't anything else but the GUI.
 
You've got to admit there's still a long way to go before an OS GUI becomes intuitively obvious.
That so many people can use computers says a lot for the human brain, not for the software.
 

@kristoffer - the Wi-Fi adapters can be present, but you would want to temporarily disable it or turn it off prior to launching Sonar, and you can enable it or turn it back on after you finish your Sonar session.  Wi-Fi adapters are famous for massive latency spikes, but the turning off or disabling workaround fixes the problem.
 
Bob Bone

I will accept that Paul. But this forum is about a very advanced DAW and in its own way CW is pushing the state of the art DAW functionally. It seems to me the user here should have a little understanding about the OS that the DAW runs on. Why CW dropped Vista support, for example.  I don't believe its enough for a user to come and complain that Sonar X3 wont run on XP.  I think its the duty to find out why not just complain, for example. 
 
Repeating a point of view that isn't taking into account the advances made to the OS and how that can improve the performance for our particular area of the wider world of computing does nothing for them and just creates confusion for those seeking answers. 
 
Keep in mind too that in this tread I pointed out a few important advances with the release of Windows 8. One being DPC latency. This was a problem in Windows 7 and Vista. It appears to no longer be a factor with Windows 8. This is just a small thing but the apposition hasn't addressed this. Its not important to web browsing or office programs but it is important to DAW users. The thing that is so confounding to me is its all due to Metro. As if that has any impact to a DAW user. Plus we have pointed out multiple ways to deal with Metro. Again they would not address that but continue to find fault. 
 
I find Windows 8 the most customizable OS I have so far used. I go back to DOS 1.