Thank you for replying.
Razorwit: That was very helpful. But I need clarification on one thing.
So after doing all the routing from the interface to the 2-Bus back to the interface and creating the audio track which is receiving that signal (already done), and after finish mixing down my other tracks to my liking and using whatever vst on all tracks (and the PRINT track), then you said to record it and bounce it. Do you mean to hit the record button to record the signal in real time which will print the signal from the 2-Bus minus the vst effects on that track, and then bounce that track again to print the vst effects on the same file?
 
Sock Monkey: No, that is not what I am trying to do (Razorwit got it right). I know the 2-Bus is only a summing box and I only want to use the signal comming from it to the DAW to apply vst effect on it (not hardware effects) and during the mixing phase (not after). So I am not mastering one track, I am mixing through the 2-Bus while applying effects on its' signal (just as putting vst effects on the master bus).
Sorry to confuse you, English is not my main language.
 
Appreciate everyone's input. Thank you

Keep in mind that Sonar is a non-destructive DAW. What you are trying to do is going against the philosophy behind Sonar. Other DAWs were/are not built with non destruction as an important feature. If I recall correctly Sonar was the first to offer a non destructive working environment. 
 
To you coming from a different philosophy its a limitation. To me its an important feature. 

John, thank you for your reply
Other DAWs I was talking about are also non-destructive, but on top of that they provide other options for the rest of us who need certain things to make our setup work as we want/prefer.
Don't get me wrong, Sonar is my number one DAW and I work exclusively in Sonar (and I own most of the other DAWs). But when I am faced with such dilemmas and see these features available in other DAWs and not in my preferred DAW, I try to make it work until such features become available. And I always get things worked out with the help of you guys in this forum.
 
Thank you again.

toledoo1
John, thank you for your reply
Other DAWs I was talking about are also non-destructive, but on top of that they provide other options for the rest of us who need certain things to make our setup work as we want/prefer.
Don't get me wrong, Sonar is my number one DAW and I work exclusively in Sonar (and I own most of the other DAWs). But when I am faced with such dilemmas and see these features available in other DAWs and not in my preferred DAW, I try to make it work until such features become available. And I always get things worked out with the help of you guys in this forum.
 
Thank you again.

By definition if they allow "printing" to the recorded/created file they are not non destructive. 

They are, but anyway, not the scope of this thread.
 
Best

toledoo1
Do you mean to hit the record button to record the signal in real time which will print the signal from the 2-Bus minus the vst effects on that track, and then bounce that track again to print the vst effects on the same file?
 

 
Yep, that's exactly it. Record-arm and record to the print track, select that track and then do "Bounce to track" to bounce it (along with the FX) to a new mixdown track. I put that track in a separate folder and keep all my versions there.
 
Dean

toledoo1
Thanks for your replies.
Sanderxpander:
What I wanted to do is to start my mixing process with a little compression/tape saturation on the master bus to affect the whole mix from the beginning, so when I make decisions about the individual tracks' eq and other processes I am doing that based on the sound I am getting from the 2-BUS and the compression/tape saturation plugins on the master bus (putting these after the mix has finished will not produce the same results as mixing with them from the start).
So when using the 2-BUS the way I explained, there is no signal going through to the master bus, and I am stuck on relying on the audio track that I created to receive the signal back from the 2-BUS into Sonar (which when record enabled won't allow processing the effects from the compressor/tape saturation plugins).
 
Leadfoot: doing it that way I will end up with only one stereo track. But I wanted to be able to mix all tracks and finish the whole mix then print them to one stereo track.
 
Any other ideas?
Thanks

I still don't get it. If you want to mix with some eq and compression on the track, it makes no difference whether they are printed to the audio or in the bin running live (except a tiny amount of CPU). Any audio going out of Sonar any way at all can go through as many fx as you like. There is no need to print to audio before the final bounce unless you run into CPU or latency compensation issues.

In other words, in order to export a nice clean stereo wave of exactly the region/length that you want, you will have to bounce anyway after your recording. Any VSTs that you have on any track will be printed to the final file at that time. In addition, if you have fx on your track during recording, you can hear what they sound like while the recording is running. So in reaching the end product there really is no workflow difference between
1. Printing the fx output to the recording track, then exporting your final wav, and
2. Recording the track dry but listening through the fx for monitoring, then exporting your final wav, including fx.

Sanderxpander:
When using an external summing box (like the 2-Bus) I am routing audio signal back into Sonar, not out of it (audio signal out of Sonar of a total of 16 individual channels then routed back to Sonar after being summed by the 2-Bus as two stereo channels). So the audio track that is receiving this signal can't process any of my plugins on it at the same time as receiving the audio signal from outside of Sonar (I only can hear the effects of these plugins when engaging the monitoring button). So I have to print the audio signal coming into sonar then I can treat it as you mentioned by bouncing it to record the plugins' effects on the recorded signal. Your method will work for any track that is sending audio from Sonar, but not the other way around.
It is like my audio track receiving the signal becomes my master bus, but instead of sending audio to the interface, it is receiving the audio, so it wont see any plugins' signal coming out of that same track until I bounce (where it switch its' role from receiving to a master bus-alike channel that is sending the signal again).
 
Thank you and hope this helps clarifying the issue I had.
 
Best

Dean, thank you very much for your help, it worked. You saved me big time with your recommendations, I was ready to throw the towel and you came and made my day. I can't tell you enough to what extent you were able to help me. I've just started mixing and learning and try to navigate my way through all the mixing learning process and just when I was ready to do an actual work I hit this wall. So thank you again, It is really appreciated.
And thanks to everyone else who tried to help. I hope this experience/thread will help others as well.
Here is to hope the next version of Sonar will solve this issue with a better implementation.
 
Best

That doesn't actually change anything I said. If you press the monitoring button, you're sending audio out of Sonar via the monitoring output. Any plugins that are on the track you're monitoring will be active, so you are effectively listening to your return track with fx on it, which is the way you want it I presume. Now when you are done recording and want to export your final wav file, your track (including plugins) needs to be bounced. This is the exact same end result as if you had printed the plugins during recording and then exported the final wav file. You don't need to "bounce to track" (although you could), you can straight away do any other processing you might want and then export the "mix" as a whole.