You haven't yet said what your target is - mono or stereo? If mono and your Pan Law has a 0dB Center, you will get a 3dB gain because you're bouncing through a stereo path.
 
The soft synth freeze gain is a separate issue but also related to whether you're using mono or stereo soft synth outputs.

brundlefly
You haven't yet said what your target is - mono or stereo?

I thought I did? Well anyway to clarify its mono.
 
So...what you're suggesting is that in order to avoid  3dB gain I should bounce my mono track to a stereo?

Well I'll be damned....it worked! But I don't want it to be a stereo track. Can I process it back to a mono externally through a wave editor and not get any gain? (Please excuse my ignorance my knowledge of DAW's is self taught).

If you want to stay mono, you either need to bounce track to track without going through a stereo bus, or set your Pan Law to -3dB center if the bounce source is a stereo bus.
 
 

OK....sorry but I just don't know what you mean by pan law. I'm not an engineer.

The pan law used by SONAR is set in Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings. Google "Pan Law" to understand what the options are all about. Wikipedia has a good article.

Were would these driver settings be in Sonar 8.5?
I don't have any selection like that in my menu.

OK I found it....it's Options, audio, general....stereo panning law.

Well there were a couple of similar options in the pan law drop down for -3db center, (I read all the help screens and applied them).
 
Unfortunately....I still get 3dB gain on my mono to mono bounce. I'm going to try a re-start...see if it works...

Well that does it. This is one of those things that's just broke. None of those options work. 3dB gain still happens on mono to mono bounce.