I´m sticking to Sonar for now. Except for Bars & Pipes on the Amiga (and ProTracker of course..), I´ve been Cakewalk since the 90ies. If I do move to something else, it will probably be to something quite different, like Live, and keep using Sonar in parallell.

I would probably still be using it, but honestly I've been moving away from Sonar since X3, and I'm only now just realizing that.  When Roland sold off to Gibson and we lost Brandon Ryan and Seth Perlstein, that was a huge loss.  How many of you guys watched all their Cake TV live sessions and joined the chat rooms.  That's when Sonar felt alive and well.  I don't want to discount the work that Craig did after Gibson took over.  He made a valued effort, and from his story a lot of it, seemed to be unappreciated by CW which is very sad to me.
 
From a functional standpoint there's no reason you couldn't continue to use Cakewalk.  Heck there's no reason I couldn't go out and buy a reel to reel tape and start recording.  As a musician I want to collaborate with others, and in this day and age, I just don't feel I can do that with Sonar anymore.  I could make a bunch of solo projects in my basement, but to me that's not what I want to do as a musician.
 
I just feel it's time to move on, but I wish all of you the best of luck that are sticking with Sonar.  I certainly understand why, I still feel it's the best DAW on the market from a producers perspective.  It's really the only DAW that fully combined the best of audio mixing with strong Midi implementation, support for notation built in, and a matrix view for the EDM folks.  There really is no other product like it on the market.

i stay, but have made the option to find a new daw in my image, it will be very difficult to find one that can match sonar.
maybe cubase can, but half of its processortime is strictly made to protect the software (cubase hired the crackers backthen)
 
so i stay with sonar as long i can

The only thing that will force me to look at other DAWs would be a catastrophic hardware failure of my Win 7 system.
 
I already have multiple system images, I've got all of my downloaded installers, programs & packs saved in 3 different locations.
 
SONAR is the only DAW I've ever known and it's not going to change.
 
It has more tools & features than i will ever need/use and Gibson's abandonment of the program will now give me the opportunity to play catch up with all the newly introduced features that I've not had a chance to master.

I've had SONAR Platinum since June of 2016 back then it wasn't on sale for a big discount, but I did the upfront Lifetime purchase. I have SONAR X3 Studio from before that - it still works (mothballed while SLPLAT keeps working). I got that in late 2014 that was at a hefty discount. Then there was SONAR X1 Studio before that since 2011, at a reasonable price. And somewhere in there I got Home Studio (Command Center Edition) to use on my laptop (which has since died... the laptop, not home studio). This was pretty inexpensive - since it is the 'basic' version (I think). Then before that in 2010 was SONAR Home Studio 7 XL and in 2002 was Cakewalk Home Studio 2002, and in late 2000 I got Music Creator and shortly before that in early 2000 Cakewalk Express 8 for Windows, before that in 1996 was Cakewalk 5.0 for MS-DOS, and the very first version and the only one I got as part of a bundle was Cakewalk 2.0 for Dos in 1990. The point of all this is all of these were paid for and put money in to the company. Granted, the Lifetime Update would have stopped that, for 18 months, I guess...
 
I don't actually plan to change DAWS right now. For this music industry that can barely support the DAWs that get infusions from their hardware side, I don't think I want to spend any more of my money. Others can and will AND SHOULD, obviously, but SONAR works, will work, and probably for a long while. I may never use some of the bundles (and that might be good as thirdparty things might disappear regardless of what the activation server solution is). Other third party stuff can still be bought and used, like Melodyne, as it updates.

I'm a musical hobbyist. I don't need to deliver projects to ProTools. I very likely never will. If it continues to work, I will continue to use SONAR. If it ever stops - I am thinking Open Source if such options still exist then - there are some out there that are pretty good though perhaps not great, and if still only suited for the hobbyist - since that is what I need. 
 
I deeply and truly appreciate this community. I only joined when I got Platinum - so about 18 months ago. I very seldom, if ever, needed to post a question because they were mostly already answered. But I've come to respect the Bakers and the Hosts here and wish them every success going forward. I'm not blind to SONARS faults - but I can work around them. I know other software is equally and sometimes surpassingly as good as SONAR. But I would need to learn them and their work flows (and around their flaws). I've tried Tracktion (version 5), CuBase Elements (version 6), and a handful that I no longer remember. I always found Cakewalk, eventually even SONAR, more to my liking.

Parting thoughts on the above: I will use a Score Editor for making sheet music because that is THE fault in SONAR I really don't like working around. I'm trying several. I have the cheap version of Finale, the full version of Forte 9 on it's way, and some freeware like MuseScore. MuseScore is surprisingly powerful - but also amazingly frustrating. Forte, which I've had the basic versions of for a long while (though no spreadsheet that actually tracks that), is good and hopefully the latest version is the one I can stick to (Since I'm paying their full, if introductory, price). Again, there are others I've forgotten. As SONAR works with most VST3 and VST1 and VST2 and at 32 and 64 bit, I'm sure I'll be able to deal with software instruments for a long time. I don't do Live, so I don't need Ableton (would be fun to try, but probably expensive). I do have Adobe Audition and the free Audacity, which I use for quick scrubbing of noise and hiss (nothing like Izotope or even Melodyne, but useful still).  Basically, I'm at a point, having gotten the latest Forte for working with Scores, that I should not NEED to spend any more money - I have what I need, pretty much.
 
I've backed up my Command Center downloads three times (three separate media types and locations), and redownloaded everything still available to download and backed that up the same three ways as Command Center. Ah, and backed up Command Center, too - just in case. Even if you never plan to use SONAR again, it would be smart to backup yours too, just in case.
 
Thanks.

I'll stay and additionally I'm learning to work with Cubase. 
 
All my business "colleagues" do work with Cubase, but over 30 years of working with Cakewalk has to say all, I want to go to pension with Sonar!! (Another 10 years)
 
Bassman.
 

Jimbo 88
I literally have made over $2.5M using Sonar as a professional composer.

Dear Jimbo 88,
 
I am a former African dictator named Robert. I have a Zimbabwean bank account with $10 billion ...

I'm staying with SPlat.

 

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Tooooooooooooooooo!