I'm thinking the same way Rick. Loading my gun right now. Thanks lawp. That clinches it for me.

Hey Starise,
 
I gave $84.99 at AudioDeluxe.com, best price I could find.

Awright!  Improvements for the MACKIE controllers in 2.6!  Presonus rocks.
 

2.6 is now available.
I restored a backup to do a fresh install of the basic program.
Downloaded, installed & registered in 5 minutes. Opened a previous project & it's working great.

Sonar = Finicky to set up.
Sonar = Some features do not work as advertised and/or as expected.
Sonar = Must know workarounds to keep application stable.
Sonar = Must freeze soft synths or Sonar will hang or refuse to load a project.
Sonar = Cannot slip edit clips which have fade-in or fade-out
Sonar = Will randomly turn the audio engine off when playing a synth plugin
Sonar = Some audio clips will not move. Some clips random unpredictable behavior.  Sonar selecting clips on random tracks.
Sonar = Lost Audio Data - Recorded a take clicked in Pro Channel and the audio clip was deleted from the project.
Sonar = In order to Freeze a Synth you must first click the Solo button in the synth rack for the freeze button to become active.
Sonar = Issues reported to Cakewalk 8 months ago, including several crash dumps. No word from Cakewalk.
Sonar = No updates to software in over 8 months.
Sonar = End Of Product Life after 3 months initial release.
Sonar = Company refuses to communicate with customers concerning updates.
 
Above are a few things observed with Sonar X2a.
How does Studio One compare?
 

 rtucker - Same here. Smooth process. I think the deal only lasts until the 31st. for anyone who might be contemplating augmenting Sonar. 
 
kevo- I think I sense a little frustration here :) Understandable, though no DAW is immune to similar kinds of things. The SO2 2.6 update addressed a lot of issues that it had. I hope you have gotten some help there. It can be frustrating to try to do something and then it doesn't work like it should. Personally I haven't had major issues with  soft synths  in Sonar X2. Are you loading up projects heavy when this happens? Just curious. Some soft synths are a heavy load no matter which DAW you use. Best of luck to you in getting it sorted out. Where you lost audio data. Did you try to click CTRL+Z? This usually undoes whatever just happened.
 
 I downloaded SO2 last night and since I had a Presonus interface it immediately recognized all inputs. Had no problem scanning all of my plug-ins that were 64 bit. There is an option to download either 64 or 32. Soft synths are drag and drop from a browser or you can go to the header and select an instrument track. Simply drag the synth onto the work space and it loads that synth. My midi keyboard driver was recognized but it wasn't on their presets list.
 
 My initial take on navigation is that it is pretty smooth. I was able to record in only a few minutes. The browser was really good at meta data. It categorized everything really well. I'm not used to that in some other DAWs. The effects seem like a nice toolbox to work with, the metering plug-ins are decent.Each channel has a condensed version of the effect GUI for immediate adjustments at each channel, thus avoiding opening another window for the most part. The included soft synths are run of the mill, nothing extraordinary but decent to get the job done. I was able to load a Kontakt multi and see the channels but didn't figure out how to arm all tracks yet, although I could see audio in the tracks on BFD 2. For someone who has worked with DAWs this isn't a tough program to learn on the surface. I didn't get the chance yet to get into any of the more complex inner workings. The keystrokes are mostly different than Sonar but not unintuitive.  The only instability I had was when I tried to load an exs file from Kontakt, but that would make any DAW hiccup in windows.
 
 My take so far is that this is an easy DAW to learn and it has a lot of capability. Tough to go wrong if you want streamlined, straight forward and effective. Same can be said for Sonar IMO. SO2 just has a unique way of accomplishing a task in a way that seems to flow with what you are doing, whether that is midi or audio. The main thing I noticed about SO2 when compared to Sonar is that although we can customize a workflow in Sonar that fits our way of working it seems easier to do with SO2. Once done both systems do the job.