Bb5 - I concur with the consensus here - many good ideas.

Regarding your OP, I also heartily concur with the recommendations for the Groove 3 tutorials on Sonar - especially in your case, the one on Mixing in Sonar X1 which is still totally relevant even with X2.

Actually using that tutorial as a basis I recently posted a message regarding bus mixing, which has some of its starting ideas originating from that tutorial.

If interested my post on that is here:
http://forum.cakewalk.com...echnique-m2870816.aspx

konradh
For example, you often hear the advice about boosting the EQ and sweeping the frequency until you hear the bad thing.  You are supposed to note that frequency as the place to cut.  In real life, when you boost like that, almost every frequency sounds horrible if boosted significantly.  

Konradh,
 
I've thought this to be true (in my experience) but was always a bit apprehensive about saying it out loud.
 
Maybe I just dont' know what to actually listen for??!!??

I found this course to be very helpful:
 
Production Mixing Mastering with Waves - 5th Edition
 
You can get it on Amazon - Get the one with the CD and DVDs.  It has projects of different genres with all of the appropriate mastering effects applied.  You can turn them off and on to hear what they do.  It's relatively straight forward to go from the Waves plugins (14 day trail versions included) to your own when you have learned what to do with them.  At one time, it was a Berklee course.  I don't know if it still is, but is has some magic between the covers :-)