Okay, I made a stereo recording using two mono tracks. I go to mix it down in the mixer and I have 8 level meters I have to deal with before it leaves Sonar. I tried adjusting the meters and another meter moves. I try deleting busses and my tracks disappear. I swear it's like playing a shell game. Every level must be set right or else you end up with a very quiet audio export. I'm really not liking the mixer. Too many level controls for a simple two track recording.

Well that sounds like its your doing not the mixer's. You have 2 mono tracks out putting to what? 

Well there's master, mains, preview, ProChannel and dual track meters. I counted them, 8 level meters on my screen. I did NOT add any busses, they are all just there on setup. I was able to delete the Preview meters. They are all tied together and must be set right, and when you do set the level, it changes on it's own.
 

Trying to mix in Sonar's mixer is like playing the carnival game "Mole in the Hole". You bop one mole and another pops up...or in this case the meter levels goes down.

Set the Main at 0 and drag it off the screen. Close the Pro Channels and turn them off. Now all you have is Mono 1, Mono 2 and Master. Don't clip the Master.
 

Okay thanks, I minimized the Pro Channel screen, deleted the Master, Preview, and Metronome busses. So now all I have showing is track 1, track 2, and the locked main out. This cleans it up nicely for me, as all I want is a simple mixer. The level meters in the Pro Channel box still confuse me as they don't seem to respond as I would expect. I can close up the box and not deal with them. All these level meters were confusing me and I was getting very low volume exported mixes. Now that they are all gone, I shouldn't have a problem anymore. Thanks again.

You can take the console emulator out of the pro channel or just ignore the meters in it until you get used to them. They can be confusing.

I have never found the level metres in Sonar something I "have to deal with". They are fairly logical IMHO. You have deleted all of your busses, and as a result you now have nowhere to apply any kind of master whole mix fx.
 
I suggest a little time with the user guide might clear things up:)

What was happening was some of the level meters were adjusted to really low level and interfering with my ability to export mixes at a decent level. I didn't realize they all had to be set right to get a decent exported file. Eliminating them gets rid of this headache. I couldn't figure out why my mixes were so quiet. Now I've gotten it straightened out.

tenfoot
I have never found the level metres in Sonar something I "have to deal with". They are fairly logical IMHO. You have deleted all of your busses, and as a result you now have nowhere to apply any kind of master whole mix fx.
 
I suggest a little time with the user guide might clear things up:)

 Adding effects to the whole mix, wasn't what I wanted to do, I just wanted straight recordings. The main concern was the low level of the exported files.