This should be SOOOOOO simple but has got me baffled. All tracks show no clipping. Master shows no clipping. No matter what I do, the output ( played in Windows Media Player) is always heavily distorted. Here is a list of what I have tried so far:
1. Confirmed all clips to master. master to daw1-2
2. What you hear, 24Bit 96K. Entire mix and Main Outs
3. What you hear, 16Bit 44K. Entire mix and Main Outs
 
What I just noticed is that as it exports (looks as if project is playing), nearly all the tracks are slamming into the red in spite of gain/volume levels. I suspect that to be the issue.
 
Any thoughts?
 
Thanks in advance.
King
Win7 Pro SP1 Sonar X3e i7-3337K 32g 1T+ Asus mb Presonus Firestudio

Kingb501 
What I just noticed is that as it exports (looks as if project is playing), nearly all the tracks are slamming into the red in spite of gain/volume levels. I suspect that to be the issue.
 
Any thoughts

Yes, its definitely a gain staging issue. Look at all effects, ins and outs of your routing and maybe even pan laws.

Forget about Windows Media Player.
 
Import your Export back into Sonar and listen to it there.
If it's still distorted then yeah, it's a routing problem.
 
If it's not then it's WMP at fault

Would have thought What You Hear setting would be obvious. I saved as a wave.  Loaded my project back and it sounds fine. However, I see wave (Microsoft). Saved as wave (Microsoft). Sounds ok. I thought a wave format was a wave format. Apparently they aren't they the same. How do you guys export so stuff can be played on any machine?

I only ever use the first option in the list - Wave

I had an idiot moment recently where I realized that I was not only exporting the stereo output but also my headphone mix. my interface has four output "buses" - "one" being the main outs, "four" being headphone out, "two" and "three" assignable for whatever. one song I had the master bus routed to the main outs but also to the phones via a "send". I finally noticed during an export, looking in the lower left quadrant of the export dialogue, output "bus" "one" and also output "bus" "four" were listed to be exported. And I wondered why the mix seemed so loud when it sounded reasonable in the monitors and the phones, lol. Actually I figured it out on a song where only trumpets happened to be routed to the phones - kept wondering why the damned trumpets were always so much louder in the export than in the playback no matter  how much I turned them down. One more thing to double check when exporting - make sure you are only exporting the stereo out!

Kingb501
Would have thought What You Hear setting would be obvious. I saved as a wave.  Loaded my project back and it sounds fine. However, I see wave (Microsoft). Saved as wave (Microsoft). Sounds ok. I thought a wave format was a wave format. Apparently they aren't they the same. How do you guys export so stuff can be played on any machine?

"What you hear" is simply a preset that selects the "Entire Mix" source category. It selects ALL available hardware outputs. For basic use this is fine and since this is normally what you would hear through your monitors (assuming you have 2 hardware outs in use in a project). SONAR however has no idea what your hardware outs are being used for. i.e if you have 4 hardware outs and 2 of them are used for an alt mix, or headphones and you have tracks routed to them, exporting this mix would actually NOT be what you hear, since some unwanted outputs would get summed. 
 
For the most control, export with source category set to "Buses" and then select the bus that is the sum of all your outputs. Its typically called "Master" unless you renamed it or used a different bus. The export you get will then be exactly what is being sent to Master. For the file format just select the first format Wave. There is no need to change it.

stevesweat
I had an idiot moment recently where I realized that I was not only exporting the stereo output but also my headphone mix. my interface has four output "buses" - "one" being the main outs, "four" being headphone out, "two" and "three" assignable for whatever. one song I had the master bus routed to the main outs but also to the phones via a "send". I finally noticed during an export, looking in the lower left quadrant of the export dialogue, output "bus" "one" and also output "bus" "four" were listed to be exported. And I wondered why the mix seemed so loud when it sounded reasonable in the monitors and the phones, lol. Actually I figured it out on a song where only trumpets happened to be routed to the phones - kept wondering why the damned trumpets were always so much louder in the export than in the playback no matter  how much I turned them down. One more thing to double check when exporting - make sure you are only exporting the stereo out!

For this very reason I ALWAYS use Main Outs in the Export dialog

Thanks for the help guys.
Exporting the master bus seems to do the trick.
King