Hey Everyone,
I've been messing around with sonar for years and I still consider myself a newbie. Seems like I have been stuck in the "I just can't get that pro sound" club forever. I'm convinced it's not my gear, so it must be my ears. So a few questions and I know it's not entirely a black and white thing with a cut in stone rulebook but I wondered if there is just basic things that people do to each track for each instrument. What is the industry standard for recording bass? What about guitars? Synths? What get's panned where? What stays in the center? I know I'm probably asking a loaded question. Here is my list of equipment:

 
Sonar Ver: X3 Producer
Interface: Focusrite 18i20
Monitors: Tannoy Reveal
Controller: Axiom 49
Drums: Addicitive Drums
Plugins: Guitar Rig 5, Melodyne, and all the other ones included with X3 Producer.
 
The kind of music I record is rock, country, blues, alt rock, folk kind of stuff. I've been looking at a lot of videos on youtube and the culprit to my issues may be compression and EQ as I cannot seem to wrap my head around how this works. Also I have been told that gain staging is a big one too. I guess this is where the academics of sound science come in as opposed to what I'm doing which is playing with dials and knobs "just to see what happens" and if the outcome is pleasing to my ears. So I guess I am wanting to take the next step to overcome my plateau. Let's not forget about mastering either, I know that is a huge ingredient that is missing in my final product which of course I do not understand the science of either.
 
My workflow goes something like this:
 
Set the metronome
Track guitars
Track vocals
Track bass
Synth Keys
Synth Drums
 
Play with level faders
Play with panning
Add effects and EQ to tracks
Have each track output to master bus
Maybe add some eq on the master bus and then eventually plateau and export to wav and then from there export to mp3 with audacity.
 
So with all that said, I need help. Who wants to point me in the right direction? 
 

Welcome to the forums.  I think the only way to get better sounding mixes is to learn all the different aspects of production and then practice.
 
What I'd recommend is to google subjects like compression, EQ, mixing, and mastering audio.  There's hundreds of videos on Youtube and articles out there.  I've watched hour-long Youtube videos where audio engineers master a whole project which are very helpful.  Craig Anderton has written tons of articles for Sound on Sound magazine which come up online and can be read for free.  Also check out Cakewalk Blog which has good articles. 
 
Good luck!

Welcome ,
basicely there are no rules like an industry standard (that´s a Pro Tools advertising slogan,or?)
for mixing a track. There are some hinds that work in a lot of productions,
but not for every music style, genre aso. 
On the most tracks (that´s me , OK ?) i´m :
 
having an idea, better a mix plan were every musician(instrument) is "standing "in the mix.
using the three dimensions (width (panning?), height (eq?),depth(reverb, delay) .
 
-Using a low cut or High pass Eq on nearly every instrument- to get rid of bass mulm - on rock guit tracks mostly around 50 Herz,
in metall and edm tracks 40 hz or lower.
 
doubling the rythm guitars ( 2 times playing the same rythm- to get a naturelly delay?)- pan left and right-
there can also be  different rythm on each side.
 
leaving the Kick, Snare , bass (mono!) in the middle.
also the main vocs and the solo instruments (.... )
 
But there are no rules, and the best mixes imo are the mixes with 
new ideas.
regards
 
 
 
 
 
 

There are no shortcuts. Load reference songs in SONAR, analyze their frequency content with something like
Voxengo SPAN, compare to your own tracks etc.
There isn't anything like "industry standard for recording bass/guitar/anything", there really isn't.
The most important thing in creating good mixes is giving every instrument enough room regarding frequencies.
Regarding panning, propably the only consensus is that bass (and preferably anything under about 200 Hz) and kick are always centered.
Say, if you record a piano part played with both hands, the lower part clashes most likely with bass guitar so much,
that you need to practically eliminate it. Guitars and vocals don't need anything under 100-150 Hz, so cut it out. 
Cutting everything under 40 Hz in master bus may clear out useless rumble. Sidechaining may help to get extra separation for pumping kicks etc etc.
 
It's better to compress slightly in several stages (on track level, then on project level) instead of smashing all at a time. Often some volume automation is good before compression.
Gain staging matters, but I've never considered it a biggie in my workflow. When my track output levels are appropriate (not too hot to give room for moving up or down when necessary) so that everything works in master bus, I don't give one thought separately to gain staging.
 
I'm sure there are plenty of guides, videos and tutorials about compressing, EQ and such on the internet. I doubt it's usefull to start copy-pasting them here. If those FXs remain misty to you after watching the videos, it might take a lot of text to explain them here :o)  The site www.tweakheadz.com used to be very useful to me a few years back. There were very well written guides about most anything home recording related. This http://downloads.izotope.com/guides/iZotope-Mixing-Guide-Principles-Tips-Techniques.pdf Izotopes mixing guide isn't bad either.
 
You just need to patiently play with compressors and EQs untill you can hear what they do to what kind of audio material. If you don't hear and see how they work, there's no way we can know what sounds good for the song you're working on. And there's always the question about your monitoring quality. Even with quite usable monitor speakers a really bad room can make mixing almost impossible. Then you need to compare the mix with headphones, speaker, car stereos and any equipment at your disposal. And of course, use reference tracks.
 
Books like Roey Izhakis "Mixing Audio" are really useful. It comes with an audio CD with sound examples.
 
 

OP - would you be willing to post an example of your work?  I think we would be blindly assuming where the "gap" might be without such a reference.  
 
 

I just ran across a good article on Harmony Central called 6 Reasons Why Your Recordings Suck.  Without hearing your songs or seeing your space/techniques, I suspect that you might be plagued by several of these.
 
Kalle's advice above is excellent especially the book recommendation.

as others have pointed out, there are no standards. But I think the best advice I ever received was to know what I wanted the mix to sound like before I started tracking. That might sound a little strange, and it isn't meant to preclude happy accidents, but if you start out with a sound in your head it makes the entire process go much more smoothly.
 
The second bit of advice I'd offer is pick one or two compressors, one or two EQs, one or two delays, etc. Learn what they do and how they work. Once you get a couple under your belt it is much easier to add more to the arsenal.

Are you getting tone and effects recorded/mic'd, or are you playing in dry and using plugins for tone and effects? I am getting great results in letting the VST stuff get the tone. Of course, I am in the same boat as you, longtime Cakewalk licensee, but just now getting serious. Just a thought from another noob.

As stated above, why not put your mixes on the Songs forum for evaluation?  The people there are friendly and eager to help.  You may be closer than you think and only need a few small adjustments to get what you desire.  You will need to  increase your post count to be able to post your own song, but that can easily be achieved by listening to other songs and commenting on them until you reach the minimum number to post your own songs.  I think you need five posts to do this.  I'll be looking for you.

Some basic things:
1-Carve out space for the kick and bass.  Example:  If you want the low energy to come from the kick, then high-pass filter the bass around 60 or so and let the kick own that space.  Maybe boost the bass around 1K or so to bring out the notes.  (You'll have to test whether 1K is the right area for you.)
2-Watch out for too much build up around 300-400 hz.  That can make stuff muddy.  I usually cut the kick some there.  Some people say to boost the bass there but that doesn't usually work for me.  You may notice that the ProChannel (in X1, anyway) has a frequency in the EQ defaulted to 317hz.  Might indicate that is a popular trouble area.
3-For acoustic guitars, 600-800 hz can make the guitar sound boxy.  I often cut a tad around 800 and boost just a little way up high (like 10khz).
4-Look on the Internet to see what the frequencies of the lowest notes are for various instruments as a guide to high-pass filtering.  For example, there is almost nothing useful in a guitar below 100 hz.  You can often try using a HPF and keep raising the frequency until you hear some body or depth missing: then back off a little.  I stress HPF because you can eat up a lot of bandwidth in your mix with frequencies that have no musical value.
5-People say cheap reverb is a bad thing, but I am a very light user of reverb and I hate plate which most people like for vocals (and drums).  Lexicon is my go-to.
6-Arrangement can be a bigger problem that the mix. I'm sure you don't do this, but I have heard people cut stuff with piano, organ, guitar, synth, and strings all playing stuff centered around middle C and it just gets really mushed together.  Early Beatles had very little technology on their records (although admittedly they were using great vintage mics placed by world class engineers), but their mixes sound valid today.  Even their Ed Sullivan performances which didn't have much tweaking sound good because the arrangements were very clever.
 
One thing that would help is to let us know what bands or records you think sound good.  Dragon Force, Taylor Swift, and Willie Nelson are going to have very different sounds and mix techniques.  I sometimes A/B with a CD that I don't particularly like but that has the same general instrumentation and that sounds good.
 
By the way, you can listen to a few songs on my current album and, if they sound horrible to you, disregard everything I just said. There are smarter people than me on this forum. themightykonrad.com