Nigel,
First off as far as red book I am no expert but I can tell you what I know. Red book is a set of standards (usually achieved by a good mastering engineer) that includes not only the audio data, but the artist name, song name, the lenth of space bettween songs, track order etc. Some one may correct me I am wrong here. but generally additional programs or a pro ME are required to get to red book standards.
Radio Ready... is as best I can tell a BS term used by software companies to sell their products. Get your mix as perfect as you can with great tones, a great song, melody, hook, and delivery... then master it (or have it mastered) if needed. and that is radio ready. but don't over compress it as radio stations compress everything again anyway and it will sound like sh-t.
I wouldn't say there is anything "wrong" with what you are doing but I think most of us will get the mix right then go to file>export audio and export a 2 track (left/right) wave file. and master them in a separate project. It's easier on the cpu that way and it makes you less tempted to remix while mastering so get the mix right first!
Ok Buses.... Obviously you know what a master bus is right? Well, you can create other buses too to help make mixing easier for you. Let's say you have 8-10 drum tracks, without sending them to a bus if you find out as you are mixing that the drums sound good but are a little too loud you have to move 8-10 faders individually right? So go to mixer view (on the right side near the master bus area) right click and insert stereo bus, name it drums. At the bottom of each drum track change the sends on the drums to send them to the drum bus rather than the master, and change the send of the drum bus to go to the master bus instead. Now you have one fader to pull the entire kit up and down, you can add FX to the whole kit together etc. Now set up a bus for vocals, guitars, etc... I hope that helps you understand a bit more.
-Chuck
post edited by ChuckC - 2012/02/03 08:22:02