Downloaded the X3 upgrade Tuesday night and spent most of my day off Wednesday surfin' and tearin' through it. I have been almost a lifelong Cakewalk user since a buddy recommended the product to me back in '99 or 2000? I had a blast with that for years. I finally upgraded to Sonar 6 Home Studio version back in, I dunno, maybe 2007-2008. Finally got X1, then X2, and never looked back. Been combing through the forum here for a long time and have obtained an enormous amount of help and info from y'all. I appreciate and thank all of you for that.
 
I've been hooked reading the posts in here about X3, so I thought I'd drop in myself. Here's where I'm at.    
 
Absolutely LOVING Melodyne. With a real light touch, it cleaned up my annoying vocal blemishes. Nice transparency, unbelievably user-friendly and easy to use.
 
The bus color option is brilliant. Never thought it would be such a hook for me. It makes the whole recording experience visually engaging.
 
I'm digging the Tape Emulator with the drive and warmth it adds. I think I'm already over using it...
 
The Softube Saturation Knob is really nice. I haven't given it a real workout yet on single tracks, but I tried it on the full mix and it sounded great.
 
The Nomad stuff is freakin unreal. Love playing around with those...
 
One weird glitch. When I re-opened a recent session, and a guitar track was empty. My performance was gone. I tried closing down, re-opening, re-starting. But it had vanished. I right-clicked in the track and selected "import audio," then went to Cakewalk Project files, opened up the session, and found the wave file of every track, including the missing guitar recording. I was able to add it back in, no prob. 
 
Still learnin' the trade, but havin' a blast.
 
Rock on! 
 
    
 

Mostly +1.

Excellent. Glad to hear you're having a positive experience. I started with Sonar LE around 2007 (maybe earlier-can't remember exactly) and soon upgraded to Sonar Home Studio 6XL. Been non-stop since. X3 is the best release yet although I have to say all versions of Sonar have always been a good experience for me. Aside from all the great features X3 has to offer I'm really liking the audio to midi conversion. Great stuff IMO. 
 
Cheers

+1 Enjoy.

Another big +1.    I'm only one day into X3 even though I've been doing a lot of reading over the last few days, but so far this seems to be a really, really good release.  And although there have been a few confirmed bugs with UAD and Waves plugins, the bakers are on top of it like never before. 
 
There has been a lot of negavity around here over the last six months or so, and not all of unwarranted.   But it sure seems that the air is clearing and the sun is shining again.   IOW, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.