So I reach a point in every tune I work one where it's time to swap out my writing hat for my mixing hat. Mostly this phase involves bouncing down all the MIDI to audio. I also do some cleanup in my Track View, moving all the MIDI tracks to a "MIDI" folder that I archive. I also archive my "Synth Audio" folder, which has all the audio halves of my soft synths. After bouncing down a synth, I move that audio track into it's respective folder (DRUMS, GTRS, SYNTHS, etc.)
 
This process is a total time-suck. I realize some of this is because I want to keep using this workflow, with tracks foldered up by type, keeping my soft-synths tracks separate, etc. But one thing that irks the hell out of me is  bouncing things down. I have to select the MIDI track, then make sure the soft synth audio track is selected (Because despite the griping SONAR still doesn't auto recognize this), I also have to make sure the full time range is selected. Then I Bounce down the track, then I move all the tracks around to organize them right.
 
Here's what would make that much easier for me:
 
When selected a MIDI tracks for bouncing down, SONAR auto-recognizes it's output to a soft-synth track and auto selects it. Also, an option to have the new track appear immediately below the selected track, instead of at the bottom of the track list...so it's already in the right folder. If it also inherited the name of the selected MIDI track it would save me even another step. 
 
Bonus: Select multiple tracks and have them each bounce down discreetly, so I can bounce the whole song down track by track in one step. Then instead of this process taking a whole night it would only take me about 30 seconds!
 

You could look at the freezing options for soft-synths, that might make things more simple.
 
Frankly, at this point, I just use instruments tracks for soft-synths and leave them as MIDI.  I'll do all my mixing on the instrument tracks.  For drums, sometimes I'll bounce each drum out to separate track, but also left them as soft synth by using multi-out synths.  Sonar gives you a wave preview in the multi-out tracks, so that's nice too.
 
I figure if I can spare the CPU power (which most of the time I can) then why bother bouncing everything to audio?
 
My $0.02
 
Neel
www.mamf.ca

Yeah I hear ya, I sometimes do that on quick production stuff. But for my own tunes I prefer audio. First and most importantly, it's easier to backup and archive, and I can always bring the tune back to life or make it portable when it's all audio.
 
Secondly, audio just "listens" better. Tweaking things like gain automation and compressor settings are way easier when I've got an actual audio file I'm looking at. The waveform preview isn't really robust enough for that. 
 
Audio is also more flexible. If I want to slide something around by some mirco-amount, or I decide to make some major mix decisions by copy/pasting sections around (lets say a stutter edit on a note) or working with a time-based effect that I want to move to another section (lets say a flange, make sure the modulation happens at the same place) I know that's what I got, I don't have to hit play and hope it all lines up that time around.
 
Plus, it's easier for me to think about just mixing when it's all audio. If I've got looooooong midi notes triggering a pad sound and i want to playback a section I don't have to pre-roll to get all the sounds going again. And when my eyes can see waveforms consistently on every track I don't think about that anymore and just concentrate on mixing.
 
Still, that said I should probably just look at my freezing options. 

You can also select all your tracks, then select Export Audio and select tracks (instead of busses).  This will export a separate wave file for each track.  Then open a new session, import all the "stems" and mix away.

MondoArt
You could look at the freezing options for soft-synths, that might make things more simple.

 
This ^^^^
 
Just freeze, then drag the audio out of Sonar and into your project folder.
 

I figure if I can spare the CPU power (which most of the time I can) then why bother bouncing everything to audio?

It's good for backing up files you might want to use in the future. You never know whether that public domain plug-in you liked in 2014 will open under Windows 27...but a WAV file probably will open.

Craig,
 
Whaddya mean when you say "drag the audio out of SONAR and into your project folder". I would guess freezing already dumps the audio into the project folder, do you mean just dragging the clip off the synth track and onto its own audio track, in a track folder of my choosing?
 

I always freeze the synths with any track fx bypassed so that these can still be tweaked after the freeze as I don't like looking at midi tracks either when mixing. The downside of this is that any clip automation/fades/slip edits or movement of clips are lost in the event of having to unfreeze and re-freeze the synth, so if using clip automation I drag the frozen synth track to a new audio track, copy the fx bin to the new track,hide the frozen synth and do any clip automation on the new audio track.

You don't need to bypass your Fx when freezing a synth - just right click the freeze button, go into Freeze Options and make sure Track Fx isn't checked.
 
You can do this either from track View or the Synth Rack
 
I use freeze all the time and cannot remember the last time I did a bounce to track

Bristol_Jonesey
You don't need to bypass your Fx when freezing a synth - just right click the freeze button, go into Freeze Options and make sure Track Fx isn't checked.
 
You can do this either from track View or the Synth Rack
 
I use freeze all the time and cannot remember the last time I did a bounce to track

Yeah, that's what I meant - a freeze without fx.