Is it 20-40% better sounding?

console emulation? It seems to be on by default in the default template, not sure if it would be applied to an imported project, but if it gets turned on somewhere along the line it could certainly account for a difference... that being the idea and all... 

Ya know... I thought it was just me and I didn't say anything yesterday, but I got the sensation that X2 sounded a bit cleaner/tighter (ie- better) than X1 myself.  I have been working on a mix in X1 and am going to finish it in X2.

Reality?  Perception?  I dunno.  For now, I go with perception, but I like it.  :-)

tbosco I still say I "think" its a tad better, and when it come to that "a tad better" some people will spend big bucks to hear it, or "think" they hear it with audio. *L* I do know that Media Center 17 sounds better with Asio drivers than iTunes.

Check your pan laws to see if they are the same as what you used in X1. I hear no sound differences here and never have on any version of Cakewalk or Sonar that I've ever had to be honest.

Keep in mind, the track/project templates you're running in X2 may make a project sound a little different due to the work that may have went into them. Meaning, they did so much work on this your Pro Channel sounds may actually be altered a bit if anything was improved on them. You just never know. So maybe what you are hearing is different and it does have to do with Sonar X2, but it's not due to the audio engine...that I can assure you of. :)

Now the audio engine is *improved* to where it is using a different technology than the one in X1. You should notice less drop-outs and less of the audio engine disengaging itself. It's not gapless, but it's supposed to be "near gapless". This was by design and is a major improvement over what we had. But there isn't a sound quality difference in the engine itself. :) I had a chance to pick Noel's brain about this stuff....I'm not just making it up. LOL!

-Danny

X2 Sounds Better!!

Yes it does and work better. No glitch almost never doing anything during playback. You can change screensets too without "click" noise!
Add VSTs without any disturbance of timing!

I have not updated to X2 yet (i haven't dloaded, but it's waiting for me),   but I have experenced this "sounding better" thing in the past with other versions.

Your ears are very tuned to the project you are working on and you notice a slightly better sound.  It feels and sounds better and you can't put a finger on it.

I believe this occurs (and is real) because the audio engine and the DAW machine is performing better.  It might have to do more with the material playing "tighter" than frequency issues....(the reverb plug-in is slightly smoother, etc.).

So yes,  when Boredmonkey says it "sounds better" I believe him.   i doubt anyone else would notice,  but someone hearing the same material a thousand times over will. 

Glad you folks are seeing improvements and enjoying X2 - that's all that matters really :)
Regarding the engine there have been hundreds of changes spread out all around, the majority being in the areas of effects, prochannel, and realtime playback and triggering of synths, loops and audio. We have new code to handle transitions (or gaps as some refer to it) that make it far more seamless than X1. For example inserting/bypassing/replacing synths, changing loop points etc no longer interrupt the audio stream and are done in parallel with a smooth transition at the end.
Rendering of automation has also been improved.

Regarding direct audio changes its not impossible that some combination of fixes may have activated some circuit in your mix that was previously dormant. For example a bug fix preventing an effect from rendering some parameter could now activate it. A null test should show this however as others have pointed out. We're very careful (paranoid) about ensuring that nothing changes in the mix engine to modify mixes across versions so there is no intentional change in X2 to the audio processing or pan laws/gain structure etc.

Talking about tangible changes that make things sound better, here is one measurable improvement. The timing accuracy for realtime MIDI triggering of synths is hugely improved in X2. You can measure and feel the difference for yourself by comparing X1 and X2 in this regard. The test is as follows:
- Insert any VST instrument (this also applies to some select DXi's)
- Set your audio latency to something medium high like 25 msec
- Play the soft synth or trigger it via a MIDI loop in the matrix if you don't have a keyboard controller. 

In X1 you will hear some noticeable MIDI timing jitter that gets worse as the latency is higher. At higher than 25 msec its pretty much unusable. The timing errors are particularly noticeable if you play fast rhythmic patterns. Using the matrix you can clearly hear these inaccuracies if you play MIDI patterns. 
If you now do the same test in X2 you will see that playback perfectly reproduces your live performance. I suggested a high latency of 25 msec to make the problem more evident, but the timing errors are present even at low latencies like 2 msec buffer sizes. They are just less noticeable. In X2 MIDI timing follows exactly what you play.

What it could be also is ... they may have fixed the problem with the Pro Channel turning on/off by itself, and what you thought you were hearing in X1 but weren't, you are in fact hearing now in X2. 

The mind can play tricks on you like that. I once tweaked a snare for 20 minutes until I got it sounding good, only to realize , i changed nothing, I was adjusting the VST's on a different track.

The main reason I upgraded to X2 was because of tje work they did to the audio engine. I'm hoping it fixes a lot of the problemw that existed in X1. I'm kind of surprised they didn't make a bigger deal out of it to behonest. I only saw a couple blurbs almost as an afterthought, and imo, it's the single most important thing they did in X2.

"In X1 you will hear some noticeable MIDI timing jitter that gets worse as the latency is higher. At higher than 25 msec its pretty much unusable. The timing errors are particularly noticeable if you play fast rhythmic patterns. Using the matrix you can clearly hear these inaccuracies if you play MIDI patterns. If you now do the same test in X2 you will see that playback perfectly reproduces your live performance. I suggested a high latency of 25 msec to make the problem more evident, but the timing errors are present even at low latencies like 2 msec buffer sizes. They are just less noticeable. In X2 MIDI timing follows exactly what you play." Good to know that they can start to acknowledge how bad X1 REALLY IS. :) Upgrade or Crossgrade... hmmm