Back in the cakewalk (pre sonar) days, if I chose to mixdown my audio, it would take all my tracks and combin them into a single stereo track that I could them play with to dial it in.

Now it looks like the mix down actually exports the song to a wav, mp3, etc.
I could re import that but I would like to know if there is an option to take an entire song w/ 8 or so tracks, and mix id down to a single stereo track so I could start working the sone over as a whole rather than the individual tracks.

The manual suggest that "mixdown" is now more of an export as well.

What am I missing?

You can select all your tracks or, just the tracks you want and go to "edit/bounce to tracks". After you do that, you will need to either mute or archive all the tracks you bounced into one track.

Very cool Thanks for the help. Looks like the functionality is still there, the vocabulary has just changed a bit.

Thanks again

Guitarpima


You can select all your tracks or, just the tracks you want and go to "edit/bounce to tracks". After you do that, you will need to either mute or archive all the tracks you bounced into one track.

Or just solo the bounced-down track (making sure to unsolo any other tracks that were solo'd). 
  
 And if you happen to use "Default Bus" setting, make sure to route your final mixdown to the mains instead of a bus.
 
 

Or just solo the bounced-down track (making sure to unsolo any other tracks that were solo'd). And if you happen to use "Default Bus" setting, make sure to route your final mixdown to the mains instead of a bus.

 
Yes, I like to do this as well. Route the "Master Bounce" track direct to Main Outs so it's not re-effected by anything on the Master bus, and solo it.
 
Also, I like leave everything active, and invert the phase of the bounce to see if I get cancellation with the original tracks, just to make sure everything made it into the final bounce with effects, levels and automation as expected.
 
One caveat, though, if you haven't frozen all your soft synths before that final bounce, the "live" MIDI-driven synth tracks may not cancel with the "Master Bounce" because of synth patches that never play back the same way twice due to LFOs and other modulators that are not phase-locked to the start of the patch or other random elements. The same would go for hardware synth tracks that haven't been "pre-recorded", but that probably doesn't happen as often.

brundlefly

Or just solo the bounced-down track (making sure to unsolo any other tracks that were solo'd). And if you happen to use "Default Bus" setting, make sure to route your final mixdown to the mains instead of a bus.

 
Yes, I like to do this as well. Route the "Master Bounce" track direct to Main Outs so it's not re-effected by anything on the Master bus, and solo it.
 
Also, I like leave everything active, and invert the phase of the bounce to see if I get cancellation with the original tracks, just to make sure everything made it into the final bounce with effects, levels and automation as expected.
 
One caveat, though, if you haven't frozen all your soft synths before that final bounce, the "live" MIDI-driven synth tracks may not cancel with the "Master Bounce" because of synth patches that never play back the same way twice due to LFOs and other modulators that are not phase-locked to the start of the patch or other random elements. The same would go for hardware synth tracks that haven't been "pre-recorded", but that probably doesn't happen as often.

Good point, B, about the phase cancellation, but frankly I skip the inversion approach.  I figure if something didn't make it into my mix, I'm asleep at the wheel lol.
 
This actually is my default approach.  I choose to mixdown right in the project rather than export a mix.  I may export it later for distribution to other mediums or, for example, to the production house for whatever purpose they need (which usually requires tracks and or stem exports as well).
 
But, for me, having the entire production/project in one place works well.  So it's my normal workflow to do mixdowns this way.
 
 

When I select tracks to be bounced to a single track, I'm getting duplicate tracks instead of combining them into one.  I am not selecting "duplicate". I am using the "bounce to track" feature. Please help.....am i missing something?...I have done it 5 times successfully on 5 compositions. Now, all of a sudden, WTH.

You may have 'Tracks' selected as the source for the bounce. If all of your audio is sent to a bus (Master), choose 'Buses' as the source and the Master bus in particular.
Welcome to the forum, and this thread is almost 8 years old. A lot has changed in 8 years, so some of the info in the OP may not be relevant.