I have a multi track addictive drums session. Each kit piece has its own track in Sonar, and the overheads and room have their own tracks. I have some plug-in inserts on individual tracks, and some are bussed (for example all the toms are bussed to a toms buss). Additionally, some of the pieces also have sends to other buses ( for example, parallel compression).

So I can’t just insert an audio track and record AD2 output because that won’t include all the processing from the plugins.

At the end of the signal routing, everything converges on a drum buss. What I want to do is record that drum buss to a stereo audio track audio so that I have a stereo audio track of the entire drum performance in the song. Is this possible? Or should I just mute all the tracks I don’t want and export from the master buss, where everything come together? Thanks.

Billy86
 Or should I just mute all the tracks I don’t want and export from the master buss, where everything come together? Thanks.

Anything that can be exported may be bounced. It is just a matter of making the appropriate selections in the "Bounce to Track(s)" dialog.

 If the concept of bouncing down is confusing, you can also route the Drum Buss "Output" to a new Track "Input" and record it in real-time to the new track.
 That also a great way to automate the drums in real-time to really put a human feel and touch on dynamics simply by nudging the buss fader up when you want the drums to be dominant in the mix, or nudging the fader down a tad to leave more room for the rest of the music to come up front and dominate.

Thank you for the replies. So I inserted a stereo audio track to route the drum bus to, so I could record what was summed at the drum bus on a stereo track; however, there was no option to go out of the drum bus to ANY audio tracks, ONLY to other buses. So, I tried to select the drum bus on the "in" on the audio track. That wasn't an option either. 
 
BUT... what I COULD do was select New AUX TRACK out of the drum bus, on which I can record what's summed at the drum buss. I simply named the Aux track Drum MixDown and will route it along with everything else to the Master Bus. I think it will work! 

Recording to an aux track works but Bounce To Track(s) might be a little faster. Bounce to Track(s) takes care of creating the target track(s) and can write out the result much faster than real-time recording an aux track. You may want to play around with it to become familiar with the feature. Your idea of bouncing the master bus would have worked.

scook
Recording to an aux track works but Bounce To Track(s) might be a little faster. Bounce to Track(s) takes care of creating the target track(s) and can write out the result much faster than real-time recording an aux track. You may want to play around with it to become familiar with the feature. Your idea of bouncing the master bus would have worked.

Thanks for the note. Faster is better! In Tracks/Bounce to Tracks -- with the source category set to buses -- the only bus available is the master bus. None of my other buses are listed, including the drum bus. Does that sound right? 

It could be. Not having the project in front of me I cannot say for sure.

Billy86
Thank you for the replies. So I inserted a stereo audio track to route the drum bus to, so I could record what was summed at the drum bus on a stereo track; however, there was no option to go out of the drum bus to ANY audio tracks, ONLY to other buses. So, I tried to select the drum bus on the "in" on the audio track. That wasn't an option either. 
 
BUT... what I COULD do was select New AUX TRACK out of the drum bus, on which I can record what's summed at the drum buss. I simply named the Aux track Drum MixDown and will route it along with everything else to the Master Bus. I think it will work! 

Bouncing down "tracks" to another track is indeed faster but isn't going to bounce down any effects or settings applied in the buss. So the new tracks and or Aux. channel strips will need further (duplicate) processing to sound the same.
 Seems to me you could easily land right back where you started with more tracks to mix.
 
 Obviously your audio interface doesn't support routing audio signals from busses to tracks, as does my Focusrite Scarlett 18i20.
 Sorry my bad, sometimes I forget everyone doesn't have such flexible routing options as I do with 18 inputs and 20 outs.
 
There are so many ways of creating a great and exacting stereo drums mix down track that we can commit to, even with a 2x2 interface and while it great to have a choice of many options and opinions on which is best, always remember too many cooks can easily spoil the soup.
 
You can "FREEZE" the tracks with is actually a non destructible way of bouncing down the tracks on top of themselves, and automatically knocking all FX off line.
 
One old school time tested guaranteed way to get a committed drums sound is to either Mute all other tracks, aux. sends and busses, and solo all drum channels and busses and "Export" to a stereo .wav file of the same bit depth and frequency as the project.
 Than simply "Import" it back into the project, mute or delete all other drum tracks and yer done.
 
 

Steev
Bouncing down "tracks" to another track is indeed faster but isn't going to bounce down any effects or settings applied in the buss. So the new tracks and or Aux. channel strips will need further (duplicate) processing to sound the same.
...
You can "FREEZE" the tracks with is actually a non destructible way of bouncing down the tracks on top of themselves, and automatically knocking all FX off line.
 
One old school time tested guaranteed way to get a committed drums sound is to either Mute all other tracks, aux. sends and busses, and solo all drum channels and busses and "Export" to a stereo .wav file of the same bit depth and frequency as the project.
 Than simply "Import" it back into the project, mute or delete all other drum tracks and yer done.
 

May want to review the link I provided for "Bounce To Track(s)" yourself. Before Freezing was implemented, it was common practice to Bounce and then Archive Tracks.  The difference between freeze and bounce+archive is freezing performs the bounce in the current track(s) instead of creating new tracks. Bounce has a little more control over the output and one cannot freeze a bus because buses cannot contain audio clips. Both bounce and freeze have the same options to apply effects and automation. Bouncing is nondestructive too in as much as the process creates new tracks leaving the source untouched. There is no reason to export a file and re-import the result back into the same project.

One more thing, if one goes to the trouble of exporting and re-importing tracks it might be best to archive the original tracks instead of muting them. Arching a track frees up resources muting must use because a track may be unmuted during playback.