Bit of a moan follows. Apologies in advance. There is a question at the end I hope someone can answer though.
 
-------------------------------------Pitchfork at the ready.-----------------------------------------------------------
 
Well, I for one won't buy a Gibson guitar now; not a new one. From what I gather, their guitars were getting worse and worse over the last decade or so anyway. The sick thing is that a day before the announcement I nearly purchased Sonar Platinum. There was no indication that this move was in the pipeline. Gibson would have happily taken my money for a lifetime's subscription, knowing that it would only last a day.
 
I was just getting used to Sonar, my first and only DAW since X1 Essential in 2012 to X2 Studio and then X3 Producer. I just started effectively using parallel compression (or the mix function equivalent in the Pro Channel), and my EQ'ing 'ear' was beginning to mature. Now I have to start all over again with another DAW, -probably MixBus as I liked the sound when I tried the Demo version. Moan Moan Moan; sorry, I expect we're all feeling sad.
 
-------------------------------------End of lower lip wobble sob.---------------------------------------------------- 
 
Question: What about the plugins and VST instruments being used with other DAW's? Are they still going to be 'tied' to the Cakewalk licence? I want to keep AD Drums at least for use on other systems, but I'm not sure if XLN allow that, as it was purchased with Sonar X3 as part of a bundle. Anyone know how this stands? Cheers in advance.

I've been able to load my plugins into Reaper. I've tested a number of them (some Sonitus ones and Z3TA) and they worked fine. They say there will be a way of authentication being kept so hopefully this will remain the case. And if you use the Overloud plugins search the forum where they've offered free standalone versions of the plugins bundled with SONAR. 

Sell Cakewalk to Elon Musk for $1.

Thanks for the reply kevmsmith81. That's good news from OverLoud (hope this includes X3 users) I may reinstall the Reaper trial. I had to reinstall Windows last week so lost it. 

Addictive Drums will work outside of SONAR.  Overloud's offer was for the TH3 version of the amp modelling (and some other plugins).  Did X3 have TH2 Producer?  If so, that won't work outside of SONAR X3.

BTW, is there any model for X3 owner to get the latest Platinum for a discounted price?

Jim Kalinowski, Cheers for the heads up regarding AD2. Yes, X3 came with TH2. Shame I can't use it outside Sonar. Having said that, X3 is still working, I just don't know about how future Win 10 updates might screw it. I saved all the downloads on an external drive, so I suppose I could install it on an offline PC in future with Win7/8.1 if I really had to. Whichever way I look at it, it's going to be expensive.
 
Cheers, all the same.

Maarkr
for those who are getting their software serials, 
something I started 15 years ago... a text file on my desktop where I log in every serial number and registration code or whatever when I buy it.  If I sell or upgrade it then I delete it from the file. Then every few months I email it to myself so it's in uber-land...

Yup - good strategy - I do the same thing with all my various serial numbers and account passwords and such - meaning I too save them.  I keep that info, the security/registration info, as well as the URL for the login page associated with the account/product in 3 places:
 
1) In a series of text documents in a Documents folder called Accounts, with sub-folders for the various stuff, such as Banking, Music, etc... (I do use coded info for account passwords, as hints, that only means something to me, for any financial account passwords)
 
2)  I also email each set of account info to myself, with a separate email for each account, which is stored in an email sub-folder that is also called Accounts, with the same sub-folders as in the Documents folder of the same name.
 
3)  I lastly also have a copy of the Accounts folder, and its sub-folders, in my One Drive Documents folder, giving me several ways of preserving it all.
 
Bob Bone
 

Geoff Cattle
... X3 is still working, I just don't know about how future Win 10 updates might screw it. 
 
...

It's worth thinking about what Microsoft can change that will mess thing up. At the application layer the answer is probably not a lot which is why there are so many old software products still running on Windows 10 today with few or no problems. 
 
At the hardware/driver level the probability gets higher which is why we experience problems with hardware devices needing some attention after a Windows update. The challenge here could be if they stop working altogether you need to find something that is compatible with the latest version of Windows 10 and X3. But then I doubt that many devices explicitly support X3 now they'll just support one of the standards that X3 supports like ASIO.
 
Problems might also occur where the layers cross over. Kinetic, for example, hangs if any new VSTs have been installed and needs to be "Run as Administrator" to clear the issue. After that it runs great until the next VST is installed.
 
Sonar's single platform approach and their adoption and support of Microsoft technologies probably means that the various versions are more likely to keep running than most of the cross platform competitors.
 
Of course it makes sense to prepare for the possibility of a failure but in doing this it is really important that you also figure out how to determine what has failed because no one wants to buy a new DAW when all they needed to do was "Run as Administrator" or they really needed a new Audio Interface and still have to buy one for the new DAW.
 
If you've trusted X3 this far on Windows 10 nothing has really changed and you have been successfully managing these risks. 
 
Actually one thing has changed, if it is X3 that is broken you'll need to decide who to give your cash to for a new DAW because an upgrade to the latest Sonar is no longer an option.
 
My personal guess, taking all of this into consideration, is that your copy of X3 will run just as long as my Sonar Platinum 2017.10. Some might even hypothesise that because its been stable longer it might even last longer.
 
In spite of the doom and gloom about this I think the consensus is that Sonar will work for a long time if tha's your preferred option and those who are switching are doing so for one of two reasons.

1. They run studios to generate an income so need the extra security that software support brings. Imagine saying to a paying customer "we'll be recording today with Sonar, you might have read about Gibson pilling the plug on it".
2. Making a change makes sense because its either the right time or they had been secretly considering it for a while and the Gibson announcement gave them a good excuse. (OK the second one may be a bit harsh because no one here suffers from GAS)

I chose to switch now because it seemed like a good time and I also have some older hardware that I've been thinking about replacing as well. Good news for me is that l have got all my old stuff working with Cubase, bad news is that I'm reading manuals a bit more than usual.
 
I'm also still using Sonar and have no plans to uninstall it.

I know a company that can gladly buy Cakewalk. It is Magix! Sell Cakewalk to them!