I have most of the DAWs on the PC side. X1 was going to be my last version of Sonar because I still think the GUI is cluttered. I still like the look of Sonar 2. But...after the $20 coupon, I upgraded to X2 for a nice price. I do like X2 much better. I have Ableton 9 and to me it's like comparing apples and oranges. For a 1st DAW, all of the extras in Producer blow away Live and they are the same price. Live is over priced. I think we take for granted what's in Producer but it is a goldmine for someone having a first DAW. If you work with midi quite a bit, Sonar and FL Studio has the best piano roll out there. Plus all of my previous projects from Sonar 3 and 4 from using Gigastudio open up with no problem. I also like the fact that Cakewalk still trust it's users. No dongle, phone home or any other strange authorization. Since Sonar is not a cross platform app it doesn't get the major attention in Europe because of more Mac presence. I still like to give my money to developers who trust their users.