brconflict
Thing is, Sonar is still having to play each track and mix all the individual tracks in real-time to busses, and then to the Master buss.

 
Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying, but if they're archived, they're disconnected from the CPU and the only load is the fast bounce premix you created off the master bus. Archived tracks draw no CPU power.
 

But to have the entire mix temporarily frozen (mixed-down) to a single stereo track, or to stems, would open up so much free CPU room for Sonar. That could, in a sense, be the same as Exporting the entire project to a stereo track, opening the stereo track in a whole new project and arm Track #3.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what I described, except you don't have to export anything or leave the project, and with quick grouping, you can archive/un-archive everything at once with a single ctrl-click.

Think of it this way: When you export a Stereo Master of your entire mix, literally everything you did in the project is exported as "Entire Mix", including all automation, AudioSnap data, plug-ins, everything. So, let's say that I click a "Global" freeze button (a big star button in the Control Bar). Under the hood Sonar mixes down the entire mix exactly like an Export and copies it into memory (or in a separate "hidden" or copied track), similar to how it does with individual frozen tracks. Now, when you play back the project, the only thing that is processed to the Master buss is the frozen (pseudo-export) stereo track. All other tracks are frozen (or archived/muted) and are no longer processed by the CPU. One button.

to do all this--or undo it immediately. No Ctrl+A, no undo's, no copying, or procedure to figure out.
 
I can track my vocals or overdubs, then un-freeze the project again with the single button, and go back to mixing down the whole session. Then I can set my I/O buffer levels higher, and continue to mix without drop-outs.
 
I do understand that there may be ways to accomplish this with Archiving, pre-mix, and bounce-to-clips, but when you're dealing with trying to make things simple, yet powerful, this would be a big win in my book, way beyond disabling PDC, FX, bounce-to-clips, etc.
 
I guess I'm looking for something more intuitive, because once you see how Freeze works, it's only a simple question of, "I wonder if I can freeze the entire mix?"
 
It's much easier to draw out on paper what I'm after for the buss-freezing than detail it here, but if you think of a headphone mixer for vocalists, where the bass or drums can be brought up for the vocalist (which, when frozen, do not alter the actual buss fader settings.)
 
btw, if you're at the Gibson office, I'm like literally 3 miles down the road from you (Trolley Barns on the river). I could drop by and draw this stuff out and see what you think.
 
Thanks for being a great sounding board.
 
 
 
 

Okay, I see what you mean. The bottom line is that it's possible to accomplish the function you want to accomplish in SONAR the way it is now, and it doesn't really involve complicated keystrokes, dealing with PDC, enable/disabling effects, etc. However, that doesn't diminish the fact that what you describe could certainly be a strong selling point. I think you are correct that from a consumer's point of view, it would seem somewhat magical, and be a win on both that level and from an ease of use perspective. 
 
As to how difficult or easy it would be to implement, I would think that because SONAR already has all the needed functionality, it's likely just a matter of having SONAR concatenate several commands into a single click. 
 
Here are the downsides I see...
 

• No matter what you do, the system is going to have to create a premix and that will take up most of the time even with a non-real-time bounce. Where it would get very time-consuming is if you were using external effects, or external processors (e.g., FireWire DSP farms) as that would require a real-time bounce. So compared to the current "roll your own" approach, cutting three of four keystroke commands to one or two wouldn't save a lot of overall time.
• You couldn't really have a "hidden" track, it would require some physical manifestation if for no other reason than so you could change the level or assign it to a bus (you might not want it always going to the master). Probably the best solution would be to have a track built into the default template (like the metronome is now), and the premix would go to that so you wouldn't have to create/locate/assign it each time. 
• With any approach you're going to have to switch latency when going back and forth between minimum latency for tracking and higher latency for mixing. I don't think you could build that easily into the one-click philosophy unless there was a preference it linked to that could toggle between two settings.

 
So overall, I think it would be a cool feature and worth adding if it didn't involve lots of behind the scenes work and substantial modifications to SONAR (which I tend to doubt would be an issue, but hey...it's code, I never know what is or is not "easy"). However until then, though, try what I described. Aside from the time spent generating the premix, it really only takes a few seconds. Or get Duckbar 
 

DuckBarred again! heh. Duckbar failed for me, so I gave it up after an hour of troubleshooting. 
 
I think we're close to eye-to-eye on this. Maybe close enough someone from CW Dev will read it and know what's possible and wanted. I seriously believe there's no better venue for these types of suggestions than here, unless you're in Noel's office or something. 

brconflict
I seriously believe there's no better venue for these types of suggestions than here, unless you're in Noel's office or something. 

Actually this is probably a better place, because people can vote on ideas and they can get more traction if they prove to be popular.

+1 for batch freeze/unfreeze.
Duckbar can do it but native implementation is always better.

+1... I would use it.   With a predefined track for the auto-export, and perhaps a dialog/preference for "before and after" latency values, it would be really convenient. 
 

I often wish for such a button cause I doo a lot of freezing and thawing.... this time of year.
 
In Sonar it would be a much needed and reelly cool thing to have, also.
 

brconflict
btw, if you're at the Gibson office, I'm like literally 3 miles down the road from you (Trolley Barns on the river). I could drop by and draw this stuff out and see what you think.

That would require giving away the secret location of the barricaded and guarded safe house they have him locked up in at the moment.

Assuming he works in the main campus, you can see "Gibson World Headquarters" clearly from the Interstate. If not, it's easy to find the other Gibson/Epiphone locations around. It's part of Nashville's Music heritage, after all--and likely part of the city tours.