Can we automate a mute on a Bus?

I know you can automate a mute on a track, but can I automate a mute on a bus? I have 15 individual tracks outputted to a Bus. I tried enabling the Bus for automation and clicked the mute button on and off. But it didn't record or playback the automated mute.
 
I'd like to quickly mute and unmute all the tracks together. There are probably several ways to do it. I'd like something simple and straightforward.

Bus mute is not automatable today. However you could use an aux track to achieve the same as a bus and use the automated mute on the aux track to mute it.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
Bus mute is not automatable today. However you could use an aux track to achieve the same as a bus and use the automated mute on the aux track to mute it.

 

Thanks, Noel and all for the options. I decided the options were too time consuming to set up and to just use my Studiomix, which I'm using anyway for automation and just making a mark where the fader is and move it down and back up real fast to create a manual mute for the Bus. Not as elegant as a automated mute, but functional.
 
Noel should I suggest this in a feature request or is it already in the cue? It seems to me this would be very useful for many users to have this ability. It's surprising it's not already available.

gmp
Thanks, Noel and all for the options. I decided the options were too time consuming to set up and to just use my Studiomix, which I'm using anyway for automation and just making a mark where the fader is and move it down and back up real fast to create a manual mute for the Bus. Not as elegant as a automated mute, but functional.
 
Noel should I suggest this in a feature request or is it already in the cue? It seems to me this would be very useful for many users to have this ability. It's surprising it's not already available.

Aux tracks are identical to buses if you need mute envelopes why not just use an aux track? 
I don't think its worth the complexity of having automated mute vs manual mute in buses at this point when this functionality is available in Aux tracks - i.e its not something that trivially done.

There there are lot of patch point and aux track applications descried here.
Aux tracks are like a super set of tracks and buses. 

If there are now aux tracks (which I've been completely out of the loop about up until now), what is the purpose of a Bus if the Aux track does all the same stuff?  Or does it?
 
Is there a guide of some sort when you would still opt to use a bus and not an aux track?  Does anyone else find it confusing that the Aux tracks are all intermingled with the rest of the tracks and thus not in a separate visual area so that "groups" of things can be mixed at a more macro level (think stems)?
 
Finally, if Aux tracks really do all of the things that busses do/did, why not just replace the bus with the Aux track?  If there is similar/overlapping function, and if there really is no good reason to use a bus anymore, isn't the work that was done on aux tracks the same thing as what it would have been to modify the bus code?  IOW: you said that the manipulation of the bus code would have been too hard, but it sounds like you accomplished it with the Aux track code - so why not just replace the busses?
 
I've been out of the Sonar practice for a while, so please forgive me if these things have been addressed in earlier threads as the new routing was introduced - just trying to get my head back around new workflows and understand what's what.

I still think it's strange to not have automatable mute on a bus. Volume automation is definitely NOT the same. I would back a feature request. I'd also really like (automatable) mute buttons on sends, which were suggested in another thread. Even if developing those is not trivial. There are ways to work around it, yes. But they'd improve workflow significantly in some cases.

Blades
If there are now aux tracks (which I've been completely out of the loop about up until now), what is the purpose of a Bus if the Aux track does all the same stuff?  Or does it?
 
Is there a guide of some sort when you would still opt to use a bus and not an aux track?  Does anyone else find it confusing that the Aux tracks are all intermingled with the rest of the tracks and thus not in a separate visual area so that "groups" of things can be mixed at a more macro level (think stems)?
 
Finally, if Aux tracks really do all of the things that busses do/did, why not just replace the bus with the Aux track?  If there is similar/overlapping function, and if there really is no good reason to use a bus anymore, isn't the work that was done on aux tracks the same thing as what it would have been to modify the bus code?  IOW: you said that the manipulation of the bus code would have been too hard, but it sounds like you accomplished it with the Aux track code - so why not just replace the busses?
 
I've been out of the Sonar practice for a while, so please forgive me if these things have been addressed in earlier threads as the new routing was introduced - just trying to get my head back around new workflows and understand what's what.

 
Buses and aux tracks share a lot of the architecture where they can sum inputs from other sources. The big difference us that buses cannot record audio and were designed primarily for mixing, while aux tracks provide more flexibility. So it wouldn't make sense to replace buses with aux tracks.
 
Buses live in a different section in the UI to separate mix strips from recordable strips so we cannot put aux tracks in that section. If you need to aggregate aux tracks you can use folders. Many users prefer having a summing aux track adjacent to the the tracks routing to it and put them all together in a single track folder. 
 
Not sure I understand your point about stems. Aux tracks themselves can be stems or not depending on how you manage the routing to them. And regarding automatable mute there is a lot of logic in the track strips to handle it that doesn't exist in bus strips.

Blades
Thanks for the answer Noel, but I think you are making my point here.  It doesn't really sound like there are any abilities that Buses have the Aux tracks don't (aside from their physical location on the mixer) and Aux tracks DO contain things that Buses do not....[snip] Either way - I'm sure I'll find a way to complicate my screen and mixes with even more options and just use both! :) 

Exactly! How you organize a project is personal, subjective, and can make a big difference in terms of workflow. For example, most of the time I'm "old school" when it comes to reverb, so it's a mixing function where signals sum to the reverb bus and create a cohesive room sound. Same with digital delays on dance mixes. These have much more in common with the master bus than they do with tracks, and having a limited number of buses in the same physical location as the master makes them easier to parse compared to having them in the middle of dozens of tracks.
 
However, when doing functions like multiband processing (which is track-based but requires busing), placing Aux tracks in the tracks pane is ideal, particularly because these can then be "folded up" into a track folder. When I had to put all these buses into the bus pane, it was a pane. I mean, pain.
 
While it may seem to make sense to be able to "flip" an Aux track into the bus pane, remember that the paradigm of separate track and bus sections goes back decades. It's very comfortable for many people, not so much because of the technology, but because of the organization. When used in this way, you wouldn't record into a bus, because they were designed to sum...big conceptual difference. Recording always went into tracks.
 
When hardware ceases to exist and everyone using a DAW has never mixed live sound, then the paradigm could be a lot more fluid. But for now, hardware mixers still exist - they outnumber DAWs - and anyone making the transition from hardware to software has enough thrown at them from Microsoft and Apple without having a paradigm shift in the way they think of recording, channels (tracks), buses, and mixing.
 
To each his or her own...to me this is one of SONAR's strongest points. You can take ten SONAR users and see them use the program in ten different ways.

bnokes
I'm voting for automated mutes on buses.  I didn't always use buses in mixing, but I've arrived at the party.  I love the organization that buses provide; I want my drum bus in the bus pane where it belongs; and I'd really love a simple way to mute it and un mute it.  My .02.

Until then, see post #2.