After further oggling, here are my reactions:
I like the new UI. It seems they've finally really put some thought into saving valuable screen real estate. They've broke with the standard windows toolbar and gone with a layout that can fit most features on one horizontal strip, leaving more room below for tracks.
The new mixer really doesn't mean a lot to me, since I mix from the track view.
By far the best improvement would be if they truly have the gapping problem fixed as they are claiming.
They have switched marketing tactics a little: insead of marketing the "producer's edition" as a step up, they are marketing the "studio edition" as a step down. Subtle; probably effective from a marketing standpoint, but irksome to me.
Being a proud owner of Ultrafunk already, I doubt I'll go with the "producer edition" unless V-Sampler and all the samples prove to be absolutely killer. Haveing been badly burned on the "musician's toolbox" that came with previous versions, I'm highly skeptical.
I skipped SONAR 2.0. It didn't have enough new stuff to make me take the bait. Version 3.0, combined with all the 2.0 stuff, is enough to make me upgrade, but I'll probably still wait until after the first few rounds of fixes to do it. Can you say "version 3.2"?
Aaron
http://www.voodoovibe.com