What do you use?
Any tips, tricks, advice?
 
Thanks!

You can do all of the recording and editing within Sonar. For your cd markers you will need a wav editor like Sound Forge. Hopefully X3 will have its own. 

I use CD Architect & for cross-faded tunes on cd I burn it using Redbook specs. If  you're distributing thru iTunes etc. you'll want have other single versions available as well.

so let me get this straight-
in order to burn a cd with a break in the middle of  a track, i have to spend $100 or more?
That is madness.  
CDs are ancient technology- almost obsolete.  
Why aren't there free or cheap utilities to accomplish this?
 
What about choosing "No time between tracks" and bouncing them down up to and from my track split point?  

SONAR is not a replicating program or stereo editor, tho it will do many of the tasks involved.  I'm sure there are free programs out there, but if CD Architect (comes w/ Sound Forge - even the lite "studio" version I believe) is too much, Cake has Pyro.  It is cheaper and ought to do what you want.  I have used the older versions, so it ought to work fine.
 
@

I assumed when you wrote 'a la Dark Side' you meant cross-faded tunes on a cd so the player can read it (TOC) & burning it DAO.
'gapless' is removing the empty space between songs.
Just be aware of clicks, you may need to put in a miniscule fade curve on the beginning & end of each of the tracks.

My method is using the Montage feature in Wavelab. It's perfect for this. Wavelab Elements also has this functionality, but I'd do the Trial download first. It only supports up to 96Khz, which shouldn't be an issue, but may have one or two other limitations I couldn't see.
 
As clintmartin stated, having this functionality to professionally Master in X3 to much the same level of detail and feature set would be quite nice, but I don't feel that's what Cakewalk has in mind for X3. Sonar is a mixing/production DAW. I don't see it's primary function as Mastering software.

What about Pyro audio creator? I don't have it, but it's $19.99 in the Cakewalk store. Does it work well in win 7/8 64bit enviroments? Can you do crossfades and set cd markers?
 

just give it a copy the final master of the track
and use http://www.wavosaur.com/
 
and cut / paste part 2 onto a new track.
 
BUT I would try to do it a zero point (much like looping) or at a point where the volume is low.. you should zoom in very close to find the ideal point..
 
this does / supports gapless.. BUT then if you want the 2 second gap, you can just introduce 1 second at the start / end of each file.
http://www.filehippo.com/download_cdburnerxp/
 

I have done it before too but you still need some sort of editor. If you want a bunch of tracks to flow or overlap the first thing to do is to create the long master track so it all flows the way you want. I am sure you can do it in Sonar as it is. DAW's that do have separate mastering pages make it easier that is all.
 
Once you have the long track that may consist of say 3 or 4 tracks the idea is to simply open up that total long track in some sort of editor eg Cool Edit Pro and simply cut the track at the points you want a CD player to find the starts of each new section. You have to make some decisions here as to what the 'start' of the next section actually is. (If a new track starts with a transient then that is a good place to start but if a track starts in the middle of an ambient or slow section you will just have to make some point the next start point)
 
The only requirement is that you make any cuts on a zero crossing point. Then you will end up with a long track that is now broken into 3 or 4 pieces. Simply make the final CD with those tracks with no silence between tracks. They will all butt up to each other perfectly and play exactly as they did before. ie all the 4 track will flow or overlap perfectly and you won't hear any joins or clicks either when you do. (because of the zero crossing thing)
 
But as the tracks are actually now separate items, (they will now show up as such on the CD player) if you tell you CD player to jump to one of tracks in the middle of the group it will perfectly, and play from there. It will sound like the track was in the middle of something but we know that because of the long flowing nature of the overall track but you will at least be able to cue music sections within that group.