I've always shied away from these sorts of things, but as I have evolved(???) to making greater use of virtual instruments I've started to understand some of the frustration I read here. NB: I recently spent a month using the Cubase 7 demo, and I've spent several months playing with Studio One V2, so I have seen what at least two competitors offer...
So here's what I am expecting/hoping for in Sonar X3
First - I believe it will be released in time the AES in mid October
Second - I think it will include support for VST3
Third - I think controller messages and envelopes will be tied to MIDI events such that moving a note moves the related data
Fourth - I think we will see something equivalent to Cubase Expression Maps - only better. I really like the idea of expression maps, but I wasn't impressed with the execution, and that was really the one feature I thought might cause me to jump ship
Fifth - the browser will be smarter, more like the one in Studio One, the Plug-in Manager will become history, we'll be able to manage plugins at the filesystem level.
Sixth - version control will be integrated into the file format. Studio One has a decent version control feature, but I think there is room to make it even easier.
Seventh - while it has not affected me, I bet they get closer to a gapless engine. I still don't know why I'd need it, but hey...
Eighth - real scrubbing of audio events!!! Nuff said.
Ninth - wishful thinking I'm afraid - but I am going to wish anyway - StudioWare panels return and an updated interface for scripting that supports deprecated CAL scripts while allowing us to script in Perl or Python or Visual whatever is introduced.
Tenth - the way that patch names are managed, and selected, is updated so that virtual instruments and antiquated hardware is easy to manage, and they are treated the same, or at least very similarly.
Eleventh - ASIO aggregation - if there is any team of programmers that can resolve this I think they live in Boston! And while they are at it, let's fix the whole MIDI routing mess so that we no longer need to depend on drivers for multi-client like behavior!
Twelfth - Control Surfaces, and especially the mapping of virtual to physical controls is extended to include any control surface. This one is so painfully close, it's probably really more a matter of making it easier to use.
Thirteenth - AudioSnap gets easier to use, especially for conforming the timeline to a live track. To be fair, the next best such tool is probably the one in Studio One, but it isn't a lot better.
Fourteenth - while I haven't had a lot of issues working with video I do understand that others do, so hopefully we will see better support for video work, I just don't know what that would look like.
There you go - fourteen wishes for the 13th release<G>... A lot of these are mentioned frequently, some might seem a little off the wall. But that is the nature of DAW software, we all use it differently! Most of these have been 'suggested' to the folks at Cakewalk once or twice (or more) over the the last several years, by me and I am sure others.
So why am I so optimistic? Many years ago I requested a way to refresh the "master.ins" file on the fly so that it would work better with MIDIQuest. I had to ask a couple of times, but then all of the sudden, without fanfare, there it was, and it worked flawlessly. Since then I've been less bashful about asking for things for which I may be the only beneficiary, and more patient about waiting for them!
OK, pot stirred?