First of all, my condolences on the demise of Billy (ba_midi). Didnt know him personally but have read a lot of posts from him and did realize that he was a very senior and major contributor to the forum. God give courage to his family and friends to bear the loss. Sad he didnt live to see the launch of X2, he would have been quite excited about it and we will miss his feedback on the new upgrade.



My question : Are the minimum and recommended system requirements for Sonar X2 (all versions) up anywhere on the Cakewalk site, any blog, etc? I searched quite a bit but I guess may have missed it somewhere? Need to know whether Sonar will continue to run on 32-bit machines as usual just like X1 does.

Thanks in advance.

Need to know whether Sonar will continue to run on 32-bit machines as usual just like X1 does

Ofcource it will still run on 32bit pc's. I dont speak form knowing, BUT, It would be suicide if they alienated every 32bit PC. Why not just close the company.

I know they are not officially supporting XP or Vista anymore
http://www.cakewalk.com/page.aspx/Free-SONAR-X2-upgrade

Thanks for the info Cjays and Daryl but....
hey thats disappointing !!

I have a Vista SP2 32-bit machine which runs X1 quite well and thought X2 should run as well for a start.

Now I can understand removal of support for XP but Vista...thats unfair. Vista isnt too old and I am sure there will be a lot of users who still run Vista machines with SP2 !

Is there some way to get this across to Cakewalk tech teams ?!

SONAR X2 will support Windows 7 and 8 (32 and 64-bit). XP and Vista will no longer be officially supported. No major changes beyond that but we will post system requirements when we start selling SONAR X2.

Thanks for the info Andrew.

But it will be more helpful if System requirements are published well in advance of selling Sonar X2.

For a start, the removal of support for Vista is shocking to say the least !

FYI: just because its not supported doesnt mean it wont run on it. It just means they didnt test it on XP and Vista. 

Im pretty happy that they concentrated on Win 7 and Win 8 as this means they put all their time and effort into those 2 window sysytems and didn't screw around with the older versions :)  NICE!!!

Cj

But it will be more helpful if System requirements are published well in advance of selling Sonar X2.

If your pc meets X1 requiremnts, it will more than likely meet X2, exept for the XP and Vista change.. 
 
If youy buy any PC with Win 7 or Win 8, you have nothing to worry about. You will meet the minimum requirements for sure
If youy have a quad core or more, you have nada to wrooy about. If you have i3 or i7, you have nada to worry about.
Ive came to this conclusion using common sence.

I get the point CJ.

I am fully for the latest, no doubt. All I am saying is that Vista is not too old, definitely not old as XP, particularly Vista SP2 which runs most of the latest software very well. I know that if I have the latest laptop with the best processor and the highest RAM and the latest OS and the largest number of cores, I would have no problem. But thats pretty obvious.

Question is : When I know that X2 could work quite well to the extent of my needs on my current laptop with Vista SP2 and when I am ready to put $99 to upgrade to X2, is it justified that I have to purchase a new laptop which could cost me $800 or more just because the latest upgrade does not support my OS AND is not tested on my OS ?

They didnt test it on Vista, why on earth ? The focus on Win 7 and 8 is really good, but testing on Vista and confirming compatibility would give comfort to current Vista users and could have been done anyway. Why was it not tested on Vista, 7 & 8, all at the same time ? 

As I understand, it may run on Vista nevertheless, but it is a risk for users if its not tested and confirmed and therefore a discouragement to Vista users to go for X2 rightaway. Though I wanted to be an early adopter.

Or am I the only Vista user around running Sonar X1 Producer Expanded ?

It is not the same but FWIW, I ran every version of SONAR through 8.5 on Windows XP SP1. Several versions were not supported but they ran fine just the same. Brandon already indicated that Vista (and even XP) should be OK (just not officially supported/tested) but if you are concerned about the ability of your hardware to run the next version wait until the demo is released and check it out.