Bus question...

I've used buses before in Sonar, mostly as effects sends, but not as extensively as I'm trying to now, but my problem is with a basic function I'm either not understanding or missing yet another something that has to be on, or checked... I have a piece with multiple vocals, I have mixed them to a level relationship that I like so I'm sending them to a bus I've labelled "Vocals" so I can maintain that relationship. The "Vocal" bus is then being routed to the "Master". But, when I have the "Vocal" bus volume down to infinity negative, and the "Master" bus is soloed, I still hear the vocal tracks through the master, so when I bring up the level on the "Vocal" bus I'm just adding it to what's going through the master. If I'm busing the tracks to the "Vocal" and busing the "Vocal" to the "Master", should the "Vocal" slider not control the level I hear via the Master bus? How are the individual tracks still going straight to the Master bus if I have them routed to a specific bus?
 
Also, I have an odd situation I can't figure out... one drum sound, a floor tom, is sounding through my "Bass" bus, though it is clearly being routed to the "Drum" bus... but only that one drum sound. No matter what bus I switch it to, it insists on going through the "Bass" bus... any thoughts?

. . . carry on

It leaves me wondering where you're monitoring. Could it be that you are monitoring through your audio device and not Sonar at all.

If you didn't already check this, ensure you don't have vocal sends to effects (reverb or preview busses, for example) that would be ultimately routed to master.  Also, check for pre- post- fader setting to ensure you have control of the level with your fader.
 
tr

"...what I didn't know before is that I have to route the "output" of a track, audio track in this case, to the bus, not just the bus send".   Just?    You should route the vocal tracks (audio) to the "Vocals Bus" - that is, as you say, make the Output of the Vocals tracks the "Vocals Bus" (instead of the Master).  If I understand your setup correctly, you should not have any "sends" going on aswell ...

Richard,
 
Sounds like you figured it out, but here's what I do (this comes from years of working on an analog mixer. Not to say it's the only way, but it's what works for me):
 
If you want to group tracks, ie to have a single fader control, send the track output to a bus and label it accordingly (vocal tracks go to the vocal buss). 
 
If you're feeding a track to a buss that contains FX like reverb, use that track's aux send so you can vary the amount of signal sent to the FX.  
 
Depending on the tracks in any given song, I've used as many as 30 busses. Anytime I have multiples of the same source (lead vocals, snare drum, etc), I send them to a buss. This allows the use of a single fader, plus I can apply EQ, compression, etc there as opposed to applying the same on multiple tracks. I'll also feed one buss to another buss. If I have a snare drum buss, a tom buss and a room mic buss, I'll seed these to a drum buss, which is then fed to an instrument buss. If I have (which I normally do) multiple FX busses, they all get fed to a master FX buss, which enables me to mute (for example) all FX with one button, if I need to do so during a mix.
 
Hope that's more helpful than confusing.