You will not have to reinstall anything. All versions of Cubase can/will co-exist with each other. In fact, upon first launch of Cubase 5, it will import your settings from SX2. Your old sessions should still work fine. When you save them, it will also save a new version of it so that you can still work on it in SX2 if you need to. It should be a relatively painless upgrade.

The above mentioned advice is good.
I recently upgraded to cubase 5 myself (from SX3) and I love it so far.

But you should be aware that the new versions of cubase (4 & 5) no longer support Direct-X plugins. So if you have any direct-x plugins you will have to install a vst-wrapper. You will then have to open the vst-wrapper as a regular plugin and open the direct-x plugin inside that one.

Some plugins that I've had for a long time and used frequently happens to be in direct-x format, so when I upgraded to cubase 5 all my settings for these plugins were lost when oppening the project and I have to re-insert the plugins via a wrapper and do the settings all over again. Sure, it's a little hassle. But over all it's worth it. Soooo much new sweet stuff in Cubase 5! Love it.

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I recently moved from SX3 to Cubase 5. Initially, there was a lot of things that had changed since I missed Cubase 4 so I had to read the manual a good bit and browse Cubase.net to figure things out. As I started to pick up the new way of doing things I started liking Cubase 5 more and more. I just finished my first track using Cubase 5 and I'm already anxious to start a new one to use all the new things I learned along the way. I still have SX3 installed so I can open my older projects as some of my SX3 projects won't open properly in Cubase 5. I would totally recommend upgrading.

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...thanks for the comments, guys. I went ahead with the upgrade and the new Cubase version definitely looks sweet. However, as I feared my old SX2 projects did not open up correctly. Specifically, some of the VSTs ended up loading with the wrong patches while others loaded with the correct ones but the actual sound of the patch still changed. >???<

Anyone know why what's causing this and/or how to resolve it (other than bouncing the old SX2 midi tracks to audio)? thanks again...

I would try updating to Cubase 5.0.1 and only deleting the Cubase 5 preferences.

thanks for the reply. What do you mean by "deleting the Cubase preferences"?

Try installing Cubase SX3 and use it to save the project before loading them in Cubase 5.
Cubase SX3 will work with your Cubase 5 dongle.
For more info and download link, click here:
http://www.cubase.net/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=99835

Thanks for the tip! Though it looks like this workaround applies to the projects saved through the much older Cubase VST not SX2. Any other suggestions much appreciated...

how much better is it than sx3