It's worrisome as I remember reading in this forum a few years ago that Steinberg bailed on some updates for, I think, Cubse 5 and they never did deliver on the promised updates and just went to 6 and expected all those customers to pay for the next generation upgrade. It really pissed off a lot of their users off and a bunch came over to Sonar as a result.

in fairness, there are plug-ins bundled with Sonar that won't run outside Sonar... fewer than there used to be I think, but they still exist.

Every vendor does this... for obvious reasons<G>

Bundling is cool for people who can totally use them and to entice new customers.
For me, I'd rather see the DAW in question work more on their own product rather than trying to cram a bunch of stuff in and have me pay for the license to not use it.

I realize this is not the way everyone feels, but it's certainly how I feel. 

John


Steinberg as a rule will not allow other programs to use any bundled plugins. However, though they have improved the quality of their plugins that are bundled they still don't match the quality of CW's plugins. I wouldn't bother trying to use WL's plugins in X2 Pro. Its not worth the effort. 

Kinda to underline that...
 
I've made some of Steinberg's plugs work in SONAR.  (I don't remember which ones though.)  However, in spite of the fact that I actually use WaveLab a lot more often than I use SONAR...I have only used their multi-band compressor...and even then, not all that often...and only because the (then) current version of SONAR's LP-64 Multi-band was having issues with WaveLab.  (I think that's been cleared up.)  I've never had a useful reason to use any of Steinberg's plugs in SONAR...so I don't feel like I'm missing much.  I use SONAR's plugs in WaveLab all the time.

brconflict


I currently have an issue with Wavelab 7 not recognizing 32-bit plug-ins (many), so my world has gotten complex:

1) To use 32-Bit Flux or Algorithmix plug-ins that I paid good money for and love dearly for Mastering. Wavelab 7-64 bit will not recognize them. 
2) As a result, I have to install the 32-bit version of Wavelab 7. This alone is very doable and successful, but!
3) Waves enters the picture and screws this all up. WaveShell has some fault that seems to crash Wavelab AND Sonar X2 many many times over when trying to open them, since it installs both 32 and 64-bit versions. 

Even if I try to "hide" the 32-bit versions of Waves from Sonar, and "hide" the 64-bit versions from Wavelab 7, they both still regularly crash when trying to open Waves plug-ins.

Bro--I can't empathize enough. Let me just say jbridge helped me use 64-bit host programs with 32-bit plug-ins. There is a demo that is recommended you test first. I've had a couple questions about using it and got replies the same day from the makers that always helped.
 
You shouldn't be forced to use a 32-bit host just because your plug-ins are 32-bit.

Unfortunately, any bridging is horrid for me in Wavelab (unsupported by them as well), and will drastically reduce the number of channels I can mix in Sonar. So, I'm avoiding any bridging at all costs, even at the cost of crashes. Sorry about that, but bridging, even Jbridging has been very problematic for me.