I was in the middle of mixing a show I played at here in Los Angeles recently, when I downloaded X3 and thought I'd take a shot at diving straight into X3 and continue mixing in there.  It gave me an immediate sense of the upgrade in a real-world environment, rather than just experimenting with it.
 
I'm happy to report that it all felt rather effortless going from X2.  I only really touched on mixing but I can tell you that having colour-coded tracks sped up my workflow considerably.  Here's the mix, along with the live video we shot, on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve0gKptopXY
 
 

VariousArtist
I was in the middle of mixing a show I played at here in Los Angeles recently, when I downloaded X3 and thought I'd take a shot at diving straight into X3 and continue mixing in there.  It gave me an immediate sense of the upgrade in a real-world environment, rather than just experimenting with it.
 
I'm happy to report that it all felt rather effortless going from X2.  I only really touched on mixing but I can tell you that having colour-coded tracks sped up my workflow considerably.  Here's the mix, along with the live video we shot, on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve0gKptopXY
 
 

Looks and sounds great!


 

Thanx for that VA!!!  Nice!

How you feeling about the Take Lane improvements, VA? If you've delved into that aspect that is.

Thanks Dan and cclary, I appreciate the feedback.  I also meant to mention that X3 felt a little more snappy and responsive;  I say this with caution because it's a very subjective view and not based on any scientific evidence, but it was my early impression.  I don't always feel that way about upgrades; although I've been using Cakewalk/Sonar since the DOS/Floppy days there are some upgrades that worked better for me than others.  The X-series hasn't been without issue for me, but X3 felt very comfortable for me right out of the gate, and I wouldn't have continued operating with it in a real-world project if that wasn't the case.  
 
Looking forward to trying out comping and Melodyne later, but I am simply just going to go about my usual work as my modus operandus and deal with features as and when they are required.  I did use the new Tape Sim on my recent project;  it added that missing "je ne sais quoi" and filled in the spaces and glued the live sound together nicely.

Hey Beep
 
I barely touched on the comping;  my immediate impression was that the new comping has given take lanes a reason to exist;  I was always a big proponent of layers and not a big fan of the lanes approach.  I can still see places where I'd like to have layers, partly due to screen real estate and partly because I didn't always use layers as "takes" necessarily.  I do wish there was a way to have them coexist sometimes.  
 
That being said, I began to see the light with take lanes with this release and my early impression, but I barely touched them because I wanted to focus on the project at hand and avoid the distraction.  I will certainly report back when I do get into comping more.  Looking forward to Keni's impressions too.
 

That is good news. I am looking forward to Keni's "take" as well if you'll forgive the pun. I, as you know, found Lanes to be very useful but they did indeed need a little tweaking. Would have been nice if a layers option was available though for those that want it. Seems to be very important to some folks workflow. Cheers.