Hi all,
 
Having watched a lot of YouTube videos on various subjects surrounding the dark arts of mixing (as one does) I've noticed that in some other DAW software it is possible to send from a track to another track - or, at least, have the bus right alongside the tracks in the same pane. Forgive me if I have completely missed something, but is it possible to have Sonar do the same? I often find I use a lot of busses when mixing and it can get tiring flipping from one pane to another when, for example, I'm trying to balance a track with its respective send bus.
 
Any thoughts or ideas appreciated :)

As far as I know, you cannot send to another track or have the bus in the track pane.

Thanks for the reply kondadh. I thought this was probably the case but I'm hoping someone will tell me there's an alternative!

I don't have the time to dig it up, at the moment, but I thought there were a couple of apps out there that added that functionality to Sonar.
 
I am in the middle of assisting my son market a bunch of beats he built - later on tonight, I will try to circle back, if nobody else has picked up on this for you.
 
Bob Bone
 

Personally I prefer the way Sonar does it. Reaper can do the send to another track and have a buss next to a track. I find that confusing. Also for that to be true Reaper makes no distinction as to what is a buss and a track. It also makes no distinction between audio and MIDI tracks. 
 
With Sonar I can easily follow the signal even if I have never seen the project before. With Reaper it becomes a lot more difficult at least for me. 

There was a thread in here a while back from someone clever (sorry, can't remember who) about sending a bus into another track using an effect's sidechain capabilities. With many effects that have sidechain, there's often a way to monitor just the audio from the incoming bus. 
 
Like John, I too prefer having buses and tracks segregated in different portions of the program. However, I do wish there were "bus folders" because I do a lot of multiband processing that requires multiple buses, and it can get messy pretty quickly. Fortunately, there's a simple workaround that makes multiband processing easier anyway.
 
After I have the multiband processing set up as desired, I create a "super bus" and all the multiband processing bus outputs go to that bus (no sends necessary), whose output in turn goes to the master. Then I hide the multiband buses so they're out of the way. Even better, the "super bus" provides a master volume control for the other buses.

Whether it is right or wrong, I don't know, but I have always felt I was supposed to leave Master at 0 unless fading out (or in). I guess this comes from working on multi-track tape machines and analog consoles that are tweaked so that 0 on the console is 0 on the multi-track tape machine which is zero on the 2-track master. For that reason, if a mix is overal 1 db too loud (for example), I adjust all the other buses that feed Master slightly until I have the level right and I leave Master locked on 0.
 
1-If it is OK to change Master (and I don't know of a reason that it wouldn't be), it would be a lot easier just to make a slight adjustment there to get the peak level where I want it.
2-If not OK to mess with Master, then the super-bus is a good idea for that.
 
For the record, I normally send everything to a bus (Vocals, Harmonies, Guitars, Keyboards, Strings, etc.).  Even if there is just one instrument in a category (like Bass), I still create a bus.  My thought is that once I have all the fader movements set, I can easily adjust the overall level at the bus.  (This prevents me from having to use the dreaded Offset function.)

I've always thought it would be nice for Sonar to have a customizeable section display. I generally like having busses in a different pane, but sometimes it would be really nice to have a bus next to the tracks that feed it. For example, snare top and snare bottom going to a "snare" bus right next to the tracks, and then the "snare" bus going to a "drums" bus in the bus pane.
 
One way to do that would be to allow users to create as many panes as they want and then have what they want where they want. If there were default locations that specified that tracks go to pane 1 and busses go to pane 2, it would allow current functionality to be maintained for users that like it, but then would also allow people to put stuff where they want if they want something different. Allowing the creation of new panes would allow for further customization...say a bus pane for instrument stems and then another pane for busses that go to a mixer.
Anyway, just something that I always thought would be nifty...it would allow new functionality while still maintaining current behavior.
 
To the OP - there isn't a way to have busses be anywhere but the bus pane with Sonars current functionality, but there may be hacks.
 
Dean

Because of the color code with buses and the dependent tracks with X3, its a lot easier to know where things are going. 

SONAR is and always has been modeled after the classic recording setup, where tracks are tracks and busses are busses and no one would ever confuse the two.
 
Personally, I like it that way.
 
There are, however, good arguments for Reaper's approach in which there is no distinction between a track and a bus. They've cut the cord to the old paradigm. Those of us who started out with tape and consoles are a dwindling minority now, so it doesn't really make sense to keep up the (increasingly tortured) analogy anymore.