Is there a way to automate the mute button on or off other than simulating the same effect by manually drawing the volume automation?

Thanks

You used to be able to right click the mute button and change it to automated mute, then using the mouse write the automation like any other automatable parameter. Note that I'm on an older version of Sonar and can not confirm this behavior in Sonar X series but I'm pretty sure it works the same way.

As far as writing the automation from a control surface I'm pretty sure it's only available for the Cakewalk VS Series controllers. Like on my motormix, even though I can control mute via the control surface it will not write the automation.

Personally, I don't know why mute automation is a seperate control instead of one mute button that is automatable like any of the other automatable controls in Sonar.

This is a very old issue.

That's correct, you cannot Write Enable Mute.
 
The same applies to Solo, Record, Input Echo, Read, Freeze or Archive.

Does anybody know, is there a CAKEWALK feature request for mute automation?  Mute automation is such a fundamental element of automated mixdown.  I'm kinda surprised we still don't have it.

I have started using "clip mute" to achieve this

Simply split your clips, select the section you want to mute, and hit K

I have been using this feature more and more with my mixes

You can easily insert a Track Mute Envelope from the Edit Filter and tweak this to your liking - but if you do this, you MUST right click the Mute button and select "Switch to Automated Mute"

Wait a minute...   ...this totally works, I think.
 
I went back and RTFM and did a pass with automation write enabled and did the right click on the mute button selecting "switch to automated mute" as Jonesey points out above and I wound up with a mute on/off history trace cycling from max to min at the points where I was recording the mute automation.  It was odd to not see the mute button illuminate and extinguish on playback but the track gain obeyed the mute on/off history from the mute automation write pass.  I'm a happy (and now slightly better educated) person!

The Mute button does toggle on/off IF you've selected "Switch to Automated Mute"
 
Also, the 'M' will have what looks like a fader icon appended to it so you know you're in Auto Mute mode

WDI
As far as writing the automation from a control surface I'm pretty sure it's only available for the Cakewalk VS Series controllers. Like on my motormix, even though I can control mute via the control surface it will not write the automation.

I thought this was odd so I tried it on my MCU emulator (d8b/D8Bridge).  I get the same results.  Although the muting works as it should, X3 will not write mute automation when the MUTE button press is coming from the control surface MCP MIDI, only when mouse clicked in the X3 GUI.  I hope this can be sorted out in the MCP implementation when it is revamped.  I'll submit a bug report / feature request.

CWBRN-23806