I'm staying with SONAR for a while, at least until I get my recent projects converted over to use in Studio One.  Then I figure I'll start transitioning for good.  I'm giving myself a year or two.

I certainly could be happy using Sonar for the rest of my life. My concern is my current computer is nearly ten years old, and I plan on outliving it. So at the least I feel I must prepare all the the important projects to me by exporting wav and mid files. No small task.
 
 

Also, other hardware and software makers are going to keep advancing and innovating, and any hope for Sonar maintaining compatibility is off the table. A lot of users have stated that ARA support is important to them, and have expressed disappointment that Cubase does not support it. This took some amount of work for Sonar to implement, and they've made a few improvements as well in conjunction with changes to the ARA platform. If Cakewalk had shuttered before ARA was available, those users who say it's important to them would be out of luck. Sooner or later, no matter how much I wish I could stick with Sonar, audio production technology will advance and Sonar will not.

I don't plan to abandon Sonar immediately, and other financial considerations may rule out taking advantage of current crossgrade offers. But planning for making a switch is still very much on the front burner for me.

Sorry but i can't understand why many people talk of "stability"?????
Sonar is perfect....it's a beast...i have recorded a live session with six elements for 50 min with 0 problem!
After many years of improvements Sonar is a perfect watch ,with a right Sonarist's knowledge.

Mystic38
Fine, no more Sonar development.
 
Did your copy break?.. nope.
 
I see nothing compelling about any other DAW out there..ie there is no DAW that is better in every respect vs Sonar, for if there was, I would have it already, so I am at kinda a loss as to why folk are running off so quick.. 

I'm with you, but understand why others are bailing.
 
If you spend all your time creating a project today in Sonar and it gives up the ghost, good luck opening it in the future.  This type of thing is important for a lot of people.  
 
I look at history and hope it will still work for many many years, but who knows, especially as right now it is authorized on-line only.
 

GIM Productions
Sorry but i can't understand why many people talk of "stability"?????
Sonar is perfect....it's a beast...i have recorded a live session with six elements for 50 min with 0 problem!
After many years of improvements Sonar is a perfect watch ,with a right Sonarist's knowledge.

6 tracks for a 50 minute take is practically nothing.  I can do that with a cheap Zoom recorder without fail, and far longer takes than that.  

 authorized on-line only could be a prelude to the sky is falling

Not panicking but it's time to move on. Yes us old men are happy with what we have and become complacent. We tell ourselves it's been a loyal friend all these years. However this old man realizes Sonar is on life support and that only means death sooner than later. I was never happy that Sonar never supported automation. I came from the recording world, you had a console, rack of effects and a multi-track recorder with a 2 track machine to make music, Scrolling with a mouse is not my idea and been hoping a manufacturer would realize that it's not the way to make music for creativity! What will I get? Despite what anyone says, they all sound great period! If you're a golden ear, then you would have analog tape and desk, not a DAW. So that said, with the gracious offer by Presonus to Sonar users for $149, it's hard not to say yes. Then even give time to think about it. That shows me a company really cares and is not out for a buck like Gibson.

Mystic38
 
 
I see nothing compelling about any other DAW out there.
 
Sonar is relatively bug free, feature rich, and highly stable.. 

 
As a very long time Sonar user I believed both of these statements until a week ago when I started spending serious time and attention on what else is out there. Sonar has hertitage, but it comes at a price.
 
That said, I would be thrilled to still be plugging along with Sonar still alive and updating whilst reading the speculative posts on this months release over my morning coffee, wondering why Studio One users even bother to visit this forum, much less post about how much they love their shiny new toy:)  Those were the days!

Mystic38
I am at kinda a loss as to why folk are running off so quick.. 

Here's a perspective on that. Every project I create in Sonar from this day forward is a project that I will either have to port to something else and hope that works, recreate from scratch or lose forever. It is as simple as that.
 
The platform is dead. I don't like that its dead anymore than anyone else, but its dead and its not coming back. Sooner or later I'm going to have to switch to something else. The longer I put it off, the more work I create for myself.

My copy did not break because Sonar's been broken for a long time.  

The bottom line is that with the end of Sonar, there's a fact that many things are never going to be fixed.  A lot of us stayed with Sonar in the hopes that each new release would either fix a long standing bug or return functionality that the bakers in their endless talent at bad decisions, took out in their attempt to redirect Sonar from being used in a Professional environment to a home one. 

So now there's a period at the end of the sentence.  The long standing bugs that you're forced to work around?  Never gonna be fixed.  The program being crippled by removing features?  The bakers are never gonna smarten up and put them back.  

I'm not leaving because I'm afraid it's gonna break.  I'm leaving because it's broken and I know now it will never be fixed.  

To that end though I've been using Studio One for a few days and I'm blown away at how snappy it runs and how well the features work.  I can't believe I put up with the amount of crap that Sonar dished out for as long as I did.  It really is true - you have no idea how bad your abusive relationship is until you get away from it!  I should have abandoned this sinking ship as soon as I realized it hit the iceberg like much smarter people before me did.  I'm just happy there was a lifeboat when I finally wised up and got off the ship just before it went under.