The Ins and Outs of Ins and Outs

You can certainly use a Cathedral bus to send all your tracks that need big reverb to - and they will get a good wash.  However, you won't have control of how much each of those tracks will get reverb - they all get the same.  And if you turn the backing vox up, for example to get more reverb on them, their relative volume to the other tracks goes up, as well as the reverbed backing vox.  As Randy sez above, if you put your reverb on a send (and set the reverb to %100 wet) you have control of the volume of the dry signal going out the channel to the mix and the amount going out to the reverb unit.  Usually, you will want more reverb on a backing vox than on a lead voice and this allows you to do it.  I hope that makes sense, but if you try it (lead and backing vocal) you'll see how useful this technique is.
 
Gain staging was easier to understand in the old analog days when most things had a knob on the soundboard and direct control over all the volume levels.  You could see and trace the sound.  Gain was a knob at the top of the channel (sound flows downhill like water) to set how much signal came into the track.  It flowed down through the sends where you could tap the sound off - like a faucet.  You could send this stream through the send knob (volume control) to - say - a reverb unit, which "return"ed the signal back to the board through the send return (which also had a volume control).  The reverb unit also had an input volume, and often a volume output.  Meanwhile, the untapped channel signal flowed through the eq to the channel fader.  This volume control went to master fader, as well as the send return(s).  It sounds complex, and is, but not that hard to wrap your head around.  You simply had to know to set all the volume in and outs to about 3/4 up for anything you wanted to hear, and you would get a solid but not overdriven signal (at least on pro equipment).  From there, you could finalize appropriate sound levels, usually using the channel faders.  Digital mimics this analog set up, and it gives you control over every aspect of the sound.
 
For arena sound, I'll leave it to others.
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jkoseattleNow... I'm told this is wrong. I'm not sure I understand what is wrong about it. I think it has something to do with lacking control over how much of the signal remains dry and how much goes through the bus. I've always been happy just setting that dry-wet mix in the effects themselves, but again, this is apparently wrong.

Well this is wrong in the sense you don't seem to understand the limitations of your approach and the benefits of using sends. If you know that you want all the tracks to have the exact same amount of cathedral reverb then you are fine. If you want the flexibility at mix to add relatively more reverb to one track and less to the other you need to use a send.

As for a general audio engineering forum, try Gearslutz.com. Lots of info there.

sharke
Physically speaking, sends and buses are exactly the same thing. Sonar calls them buses, so in reality a send is just a bus...etc etc

lol--JKO's confusion called for some simple clarifications, so the screenshot will be helpful.  We're using Sonar - Sonar calls the knobs Sends, and the channel strips on the right Buses, so - it's helpful if we use the terms our program uses. 
 
Randy

jkoseattle...I can route all my vocals to a vocal bus and then route that bus through a send...I should just route the Vocal Bus through the Vocal Send. Does that provide any CPU resource savings?...

It saves power to use one reverb plugin for all those tracks, instead of a separate reverb instance for each one.
 
I think you have it straight now, but I pulled out your quote because you said "...route the vocal bus through the vocal send..." - Actually, as per the screenshot posted earlier, you're routing the vocal bus to the Master bus.  You're routing just a percentage of its signal through the reverb bus via the Send knob on that vocal bus.  You probably have it set up right now, your description was just inaccurate so wanted to be sure.
 
Randy

Its only wrong, if it doeskin sound the way you want it to sound. Its only good, when it sounds the way you want it to sound. 
How you get this is up to you as there are over 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Quintilian way to get from A to B. all you need to do is learn how to use the effects and tools you have and then you will be able to use your ears and knowledge to dial in the sounds you want.
 
As far as your volume faders and sliders. this is called gain staging and there are many ways to gain stage when recording and mixing.
Basically things go like this:
1. Tracks go to the Master bus
2. Sends go to buses, if you use sends. Pre send is before the track fader and Post send is after the track fader.
3. Buses go the the master bus
4. Master bus goes to the main outs 1/2 of the sound card.
 
Now your master bus, buses and your main outs should stay at 0dB (Unity Gain). You control the volume when mixing with the track faders and the send levels (if you use sends), everythnig else is set at 0dB (unity)
 
See that is pretty simple as it works just like a hardware mixer. People think since its on a PC, it will be different , but its not!!!
 
CJ

You are over thinking this. Its just convenient. It insures that you have a standard to mix to. If you vary the level on the master buss then you wont know what your tracks are really doing. The level on the master buss should be the sum of all your tracks and buses.

Ok hang on...
 
I just removed the Vocal Sends from all my individual vocal tracks, and went to my Vocal Bus to add the Send there, but when I go to add it, it's not listed. If I click to add a Send to a regular track it's there, but not when I do it from the Bus. How come?

jkoseattle...I just removed the Vocal Sends from all my individual vocal tracks, and went to my Vocal Bus to add the Send there, but when I go to add it, it's not listed...

John must have your answer there.  Look at my screenshot in post #10.  I have a Send from the vocal bus going to the reverb bus.  But naturally when I inserted that Send, there wasn't a Send available back to that same vocal bus - You can only make a Send going to a different bus - Makes sense, yes?
 
Randy

John T
Aside from terminology, sends and buses are not the same thing.
 
A bus is a stereo (or surround) channel to which audio can be routed. A send is one of the ways of routing something to a bus. The other way is via a track or bus output.
 
Not to be a pedant, but I think this is a distinction worth being clear about. A bus is an actual thing. Send and Output assignments are more like instructions.

Right, a send is a channel (like a cable) that connects the output of one bus to the input of another. Buses in SONAR are objects that know how to mix multiple inputs and can have multiple outputs. In the signal flow diagram you will also see that a bus internally has a prochannel and an effects bin. Tracks are also buses internally, with their input coming from the project wave files, synths etc.

rbowser
1)  All vocal tracks are going out to a Vocal Bus, selected by the output controls at the bottom of their channel strips. 

 
Yes
 

rbowser
2)  A Send is opened on that Vocal Bus which goes to the Reverb Bus. 

 
Close. It's not a Reverb Bus, it's called Vocal Send, and contains Reverb, EQ, Compressor and Stereo Widening. May change this eventually, since I haven't added any effects to the instruments yet, and I might make a Reverb Bus that all the instruments go through. The vocals are coming from a kind of an alien Beach Boys singing from space, and I haven't decided if the band is in space too or on the ground.
 

rbowser
3)  Both the Reverb Bus and the Vocal Bus have their outputs going to the Master.

 
Yes
 

rbowser
- What you described still sounds strange, since you said your Vocal Send was going to the Master--?-- Vocal Send available to Vocal Out--?

 
Is it still strange?

OK. So I know there's a forum for this kind of post, but everyone has been so helpful on getting me from 8.5 to X3, lots of help about Take Lanes, ins and outs, and assorted other things, I just thought I'd share the song I've been working on all this time on this forum. Since this is going on the album I'm pulling it off SoundCloud in a couple days, and this is just a first mix. 
 
https://soundcloud.com/jkoseattle/we-are-the-elders-v1/s-O6Qvq