channel 10?

Sounds to me like the OP is trying to record MIDI performance data to a MIDI track in SONAR (essentially using it as an old-school sequencer like Cakewalk 5.0 for DOS) while using the sounds in SD as the target to produce the audio output. Makes perfect sense to me, but I've never tried it, yet. In other words, he's looking to fire SD like a MIDI sampler, maybe?
 
That is certainly something I would try if I didn't have access to a live drummer, or didn't use simple loops or patterns for a scratch drum line like I often do. This shouldn't be hard really - as I was doing it in Cakewalk 3, 4, 5 in DOS back in the 90s using a MIDI drum machine as the target of the MIDI performance data.

Sounds to me like SD is inserted in the FX bin of a track. If that's the case, I recommend the OP delete it, go to Insert >Soft Synth, choose Session Drummer and then the Simple Instrument of separate MIDI and Audio tracks. Then drag the MIDI clip to the new track (MIDI or Simple Instrument).

Session Drummer works like any other soft synth.
 
An easy way to get started with Session Drummer is with a predefined track template. Right-click in the track strip area and select a template from Insert From Track Template > Soft Synth Track Templates > Session Drummer 3. After inserting the new instance of Session Drummer, drag the MIDI data into the new Session Drummer MIDI track.
 
Where did the MIDI clip come from? If it was not included with SONAR, you may want to look in the Event Viewer to make sure it only contains note information. Remove non-note data, if any, from the MIDI clip.
 
 

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Hi All,
 
Thanks for all your responses - I'm totally confused now...
 
It was late in the evening yesterday and I thought I was able to select a different kit with the way I had it setup - I must have been tired because when I try now to do the same - the kit is still the same - I also noticed in the synth rack the session drummer icon was not the same as the icon in the session drummer track in track view, but was the same as the CW TTS Synth track...
 
Ok so what I am trying to do is use some old midi file, it has some drum data in it.  If I use the CW TTS Soft Synth it sounds too digitized - not good enough.  I am hoping to use SD3 in this case to get a more realistic sounding drum kit.
 
I'm expecting the Session Drummer Soft Synth works the same way that CW TTS Soft Synth works.  That's is, with CW TTS I drag it from here:
 

 
Then in the Midi track OUT select the CW TTS Soft Synth Track to listen to the midi drum
 
Can the same procedure be used for Session Drummer? - I tried several times and I get no sound, I don't even see the level indicator in the session drummer track receiving any data but do see the level indicators in the midi track working..
 
Hope that make sense...
 
BTW I use to have an old windows version of Cakewalk, I can't remember the version of it as it use to be on an old Windows XP PC - I have a backup of it but the ntbackup utility used in XP of the bkf file is no longer supported in Windows 8 (I might extract from the setup CD of WinXP the ntbackup utility or maybe setup a virtual Windows XP so I can again access the backup file and install the OLD Cakewalk Software).  So I think a lot of my concepts are taken from the old cakewalk software.
 
Jim

Yes, it works in a similar way. One difference, Session Drummer is inserted into a project without samples loaded in the synth. To load sounds into Session Drummer, select a program, kit or load each pad with an sfz or audio file. FWIW, the predefined track templates take care of this too.

WRT the old MIDI file, there may be data in the file TTS-1 can process or ignore which are causing Session Drummer to go silent. It may be necessary to edit the MIDI track in the event view and remove non-note data from the track.

One thing the OP may not be doing is loading a drum kit into SD3. 
 
The routing is simple
MIDI track to SD3. The out of the MIDI track goes to the in of SD3. It will have audio track/s producing the audio. This assumes you have let it create them when you used the synth rack to open SD3.  

For the audio tracks, either let the Insert Soft Synth dialog box add them, or I had included manually adding them in my earlier post in this thread.
 
In any case, I can get output from SD3 in a matter of less than a minute, doing it all manually, so I do not understand what the issue is.
 
I think enough folks have weighed in on this that it would help for the OP to review and respond to a bunch of posts, as all we can do is speculate (and when one speculates, they make a spec out of, er, em, never mind)
 
Bob Bone