I'm sooo broke but sooo envious.  I might just have to hammer the credit card...  I have upgraded to every new version since Cakewalk Professional for Windows 3.1 (pre audio).
 
Heck, I still have a T-shirt with this on it:

Although, I think it has more holes than fabric now :(

For some reason that made me think of the old "salty gravy" ad from way back when...
 

jklebanI feel bad for some of the long time users that have to sit on the sidelines due to budget constraints.  JK

 
Yeah....I feel bad for me too.
On a serious note I'm extremely pleased to read all the responses.
I just got X2PE 4 or 5 months ago so I can't justify 150$.
Should the Bakers do some future promo/sale to upgrade for 99$ I could be....oh...swayed.
Great read and keep them coming.
Carry on....
 
 

I LOVE IT!!!   I have a Lynx AES 16e with a 16 channel Aurora converter.  I can reduce the latency in at least 1/2 with this release versus 8.5.3.  So something has dramatically improved here.
The only thing I wish is that I could change the background colors in the audio and midi clips.  Anyone know if this can be done.  But still, without that, it is still awesome.

I use my laptop with live almost weekly with Ableton, Maschine and Traktor. I've never had it crash during a gig, although once, my Traktor controller stopped responding, which I attribute to a driver failure. But during a gig, you tend to do stuff you rehearsed. The same should be true for Sonar. You can try out what you're planning to do for a couple of hours. Use the exact setup you want to use live. If there are no crashes, you're good.

I think it is more stable but its still not bug free.
 
The graphics seem to draw quicker. The graphics bug with R-Mix Sonar is still present on a 3.2Gb project I retried from Sonar X2a. The graphics have partially improved in that in 3 instances of R-Mix Sonar, some work and others display a blank black centre display (X2a displayed a blank white centre display and none worked).
 
I have had my first crash inserting some plugins:-
http://forum.cakewalk.com/My-First-crash-in-Sonar-X3b-m2905503.aspx