I read a thread a day or two ago here (can't for the life of me find that thread now), where someone used a Sonitus plugin as a way to create a "track bus" using its side-chain input, so you can have the bus in the same folder with other tracks (like say, multiple drum outputs feeding into one "drum bus" in the same folder).
 
Of course one can just use a regular bus for this, but I can see how a bus in the same track folder can be useful. So my question is whether it would be useful to have a dedicated plugin that can be inserted in a track FX bin, which would then become the side-chain inputs for any other track. It should be trivial to create such a plugin, so I might have a go at it if there is enough interest. I can just modify one of my existing plugins and rip out everything and add just code to mix all inputs together.
 
Let me know.
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EDIT: Updating with the post with the actual plugin info:
 
OK here is the plugin. It works as expected, with one caveat... If you solo the track bus, Sonar will not solo the tracks feeding into the track bus. To get around this, solo the whole folder, or group the solo buttons together.
 
To use: 

• Unzip the files.
• Copy the 32-bit and/or 64-bit files somewhere into your VST3 folders.
• Let Sonar do a scan.
• The plugin shows up under Plugins > Audio FX > VST3 > Sidechain Mixer (or wherever you put it).
• Drag/drop the plugin into the FX bin of the track that you want to convert to a bus.
• Set the output of any other track to "Sidechain Mixer(Input 2)-[track bus name].

 
Some points: 

• You can also send sends into the track bus.
• You need to set PC to Post-FX if you want the signal to go through PC.
• I only tested the 64-bit version so let me know if the 32-bit version doesn't work.

 
 

I think this is Scook's idea.
This is a thread thant mentions it but it is not the OP.
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Findpost/3151211
 
I like this idea. You should add it to the Features & Ideas forum.

No, the idea belongs to LJB.
http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3050940
 
Thinking about this though...
Why not just allow moving a sub-bus into the track pane.
This way, there is no audio overhead involved. Just a display thing.

Yes that would be ideal, but until we can get that feature, a plugin allowing you to do it would have to suffice.
 
And yes, that was the thread I was talking about.

Silk,
Agreed.
And a plug would not break anything else.

SilkTone
I read a thread a day or two ago here (can't for the life of me find that thread now), where someone used a Sonitus plugin as a way to create a "track bus" using its side-chain input, so you can have the bus in the same folder with other tracks (like say, multiple drum outputs feeding into one "drum bus" in the same folder).
 
Of course one can just use a regular bus for this, but I can see how a bus in the same track folder can be useful. So my question is whether it would be useful to have a dedicated plugin that can be inserted in a track FX bin, which would then become the side-chain inputs for any other track. It should be trivial to create such a plugin, so I might have a go at it if there is enough interest. I can just modify one of my existing plugins and rip out everything and add just code to mix all inputs together.
 
Let me know.

 
Hi no sure I follow why this is even necessary. All outputs that are assigned to a given sidechain input of a plugin are automatically mixed by SONAR prior to delivery to the plugin SC input. So all you need is a dummy pass through plugin that has a sidechain input. Assign as many track or bus outs to that input and you get auto mixing. The level of the individual inputs is controlled by the send gain. This will allow you to route tracks to other tracks.

Noel,
The idea is to allow a bus to be moved over to the track pane next to the channel strips that feed that bus.
It is not a routing thing it a UI thing.
LJB came up with the idea of using the side chain of a gate to accept sends and hence simulate a bus which can then be placed in the track pane of console view and track view. (think of the way Reaper places buses...almost like a folder)
What we really want is not to have buses limited to positioning in the bus pane on the right.
LJB's method is ingenious but complicated.
Silktone is suggesting a quick and dirty plug to accept sends from other tracks/buses and simply mix them. The plug could be inserted into a track and create a 'virtual' bus with UI properties of a track and the summing functionality of a bus.
This would allow placing the 'virtual bus' into the track view track pane and console view track pane.
The same idea (unlimited UI placement of real buses) is in Features & Ideas and has been mentioned in several threads.
 http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3151211
 My suggestion (and Mod Bod's) is simply to remove the UI limitation of buses only positioned in the bus panes. This would not add additional audio routing and overhead and involve just a UI change.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk] 
Hi no sure I follow why this is even necessary. All outputs that are assigned to a given sidechain input of a plugin are automatically mixed by SONAR prior to delivery to the plugin SC input. So all you need is a dummy pass through plugin that has a sidechain input. Assign as many track or bus outs to that input and you get auto mixing. The level of the individual inputs is controlled by the send gain. This will allow you to route tracks to other tracks.

Noel, the topic of a bus in the track view has come up a few times in the past. Sometimes it is convenient to have everything visually together (including a dedicated bus). I realize this isn't a high priority feature and that there probably aren't many people that need it, but it would still be nice.
 
The reason I started this thread was that after thinking about LJB's thread and how easy it would be get the desired functionality with a very simple plugin, that I would just go ahead and take a stab at it.
 
I've been playing around with it, basically a plugin that has 4 inputs and 2 outputs. Inputs 3 and 4 then become available as a side-chain input for any other track. And as you mention, we can assign as many tracks as we want to those two inputs and all that is required would be a simple block memory copy of channels 3 and 4 into the 2 output buffers. So there isn't even any mixing required in the plugin (not that it is hard or would add any artifacts or use a lot of CPU). I'm wondering what should happen with inputs 1 and 2. They should probably just be ignored, in which case any input directly into the "track bus" would not make it to the output. But that seems fine.
 
Noel, somewhat unrelated, but maybe you can give me a quick tip... I noticed Sonar Platinum is extremely sluggish under the debugger. It starts up extremely slow (a few minutes each time), and it keeps freezing up. It was never like this. Any ideas? Are there a special mode I can put Sonar into or something along those lines? I am using AD2 as a signal source, maybe it is causing this behavior?
 
Edit: Haha, just deleted all the empty lines. It was actually my cat that stepped on the keyboard. At 1st I thought he somehow deleted the whole post, but it just scrolled off the screen.

OK I think the slow debugging was due to AD2.
 
BTW I realized I was using the VST 2.3 SDK, which doesn't support 64-bit processing. So I downloaded the VST 3 SDK and am using that instead. It might take a bit longer as I need to get up to speed with it first. I think VST 3 supports side chaining directly so I'll need to figure out how that works.

Silk,
I would be happy to be a Beta.