I have not downloaded the latest yet, but apparently there is all this talk about aux tracks.
I am not sure I understand it - but this is what I wish I could do:

Without going into the mixer view and busses - what I want to do is have 8 vocal tracks - assign one compressor to all of them on one track and have it affect all the vocal tracks.  I could do this by routing all the tracks to a buss and having the compressor on the buss in the mixer view.
 
Is this new update a way around this where all these tracks can work together with one instance of the plugin and in the track view?
THANKS,
AB

Hi Deswind,
Yep, that's exactly what it does. 
 
Dean

It's really easy. Tracks are routed via "patch points," just think of these as router boxes with an unlimited number of inputs and outputs. To create an aux track you just insert an ordinary audio track, click the input selector and either create a new patch point with "New Patch Point," or select an existing patch point. Then you can choose that patch point for the output of the tracks you want to route to the aux track. You can also select a patch point for a send. 
 
What all this means is that you could route all of your vocal tracks not just to one aux track but to multiple aux tracks, and process them separately. The possibilities are enormous - you could for example heavily compress one aux track, add a little distortion to the 2nd aux track and stick a flanger on a 3rd aux track, then mix them to taste. Or you could use band pass filters to process a different frequency range on each aux track. Or you could send them all to one aux track for compression, then set up a few other aux tracks as effect sends and send some of the individual vocal tracks to different effects. And because you can keep all of these tracks in the same folder it's all super-organized and convenient. Mayor workflow revolution. 

Craig has a couple of really good Patch Point Cookbook articles in the Cake blog
 
http://blog.cakewalk.com/...low-with-patch-points/
http://blog.cakewalk.com/...tial-of-the-aux-track/

I still don't see the difference between patch points and Buses. Is there anything besides folders that can't be done the same way as busing?

Hi Ibanezer,
In one sense, it can just be busing in the track pane, but in a larger sense the way I think of it is moving away from a point-to-point routing scheme to a point-to-multipoint scheme.
 
So, in older versions I could output any one track, or "point", to any SINGLE other destination: a bus or side-chain; thus "point-to-point". A track output or send, for example, could go to only ONE destination. Now, I can output any one track to lots of places via a patch point, thus "point-to-multipoint". So now a snare could go to a patch point and then that patch point could be the input for a drum bus, a snare-reverb input, and a highly compressed crush/disto bus. Certainly you could do that before with outputs and sends, but this way it's organized differently (I would say faster) and, if you'd like, can be contained entirely in the track pane.
 
In fact, since patch points can have multiple inputs, you could think of it as "multipoint-to-multipoint", but Sonar was kinda always that way (multiple tracks could feed a bus, e.g.)
 
Dean

I'm starting to get it. Thanks Dean. I've just done a fresh install all the way around (OS and all programs) so I haven't had any "hands on" with this yet. Should be fun!
 

Ibanezer
I still don't see the difference between patch points and Buses. Is there anything besides folders that can't be done the same way as busing?

The biggie is that Patch Points allow sending/outputting from a bus to a track.

Ibanezer
I still don't see the difference between patch points and Buses. Is there anything besides folders that can't be done the same way as busing?

Essentially they are the same. The only difference is that with an Aux track, Patch point you can have a "buss" right next to your regular tracks in the track pane rather than only having busses in the buss pane. And you can now record MIDI synths in real-time, so if you tweak them hands-on as the time-line plays, you can do that now.