Perhaps slightly off topic/not what you are looking for but in one of the Groove3 vids about mixing with Sonar the guy uses Channels Tools to create an effect he calls "Mono Maker". Kind of cool. If you have an account with them it might give some ideas to folks about this kind of thing. That is an extreme technique (pure mono) but it can be tailored to varying degrees.
I also just transferred all my notes from when I was working through all those G3 tutorials and I think I made elaborate step by step notes on that one if they help.
As far as I know Cake did not remove Channel Tools. Don't see any reason why they would.