This is a basic question but it never came up before.  I have Master Bus limiting on a song with quite a few tracks.  The master meter never hits red, but the L-R master meters do.
 
In other words, looking at the Master at the bottom of the Track View, all is well.  When I click the Master Bus and look in Inpsector, the Master meter on the left is fine but the L-R meters on the right side of Inspector are peaking.
 
What does this mean?
 
By the way, I am having a lot of trouble with overall level on this one.  Lots of stuff is going on and when I work track by track to get the levels right, the overall result sounds weak compared to my other mixes form the album.  I can work that out, but not until I understand what is going on with the metering.

Where are you setting your recording levels at for each track? Shoot for -6 to -12 db for each track and you can get a better overall mix without a lot of background noise.
 
Panning will also help identify issues in the mix too.
 
I have seen SONAR turn mono plugs into a semi stereo plug where one side, usually the right, will be louder in a mono plug when the track is deadpan center. Don't know why that is.
 
If you are mastering the track, mixdown to -6db overall for external to SONAR mastering products.
 
without seeing and hearing your results, it will be hard to tell exactly what is going on. I hope this may help you or someone else.

The reason is that you are not adopting any type of system levels wise throughout your productions. You need to get into something like the K system approach to levels. VU metering on tracks and busses and masterbuss. The idea is to keep rms levels consistent on tracks and busses and don't worry about the peaks. They take care of themselves with the built in headroom available within the K system approach. Limiters are not required in the mixdown stage. If they are you are doing something very wrong.
 
You could choose K-20 as your ref level and everything will be the same except the average level of the music will end up lower but with even more headroom. K-20 masters will have to come up higher though in the mastering phase in order to reach commercial levels.
 
You need to:
 
Choose a ref level and work at that eg K-14
 
Calibrate your system so when you play back an rms test wave with its peaks reaching -14dB the VU meters will show 0dBu. (plenty of great VST VU meters to choose from)
 
Ensure your tracks are all at K-14, your busses are at K-14 and your final mix is also at K-14. It does not matter how big or busy or dense your mix may be you can still satisfy these requirements.
 
I don't see any peaking anywhere in my system ever. No red lights coming on anywhere. As it should be.
 
Don't try and make your mix loud. That is where people go wrong. Keep everything at your K ref level and turn up the monitors in your studio to be the SPL ref level eg 85 dB SPL.
 
All of your tracks will end up the same level prior to mastering. You then wait a week and master all the tracks together and it is here you can raise the overall rms level of your tracks upward toward the higher commercial levels you may be after.
 
You definitely need the VU meter VST's because DAW's do not (normally) provide accurate rms metering especially at K reference levels (except Studio One does however)
 
What you have to do is to pull all the tracks down that are feeding a buss so the buss just reads the K ref level on the VU's. Then mix all the busses to the master so the master is just reaching the final K ref level too. When you get this right you are well away from any peaking or clipping anywhere.
 
Turn your monitors up and stop trying to make your mix loud. Mixing is NOT the time to do this, mastering is.
 
 

The Track Inspector when showing buses shows the selected buss and where it is going to. In the case you mention that would be your main outs. If they do not show the same level as your master buss then something is not set right.  This could be post re setting on the master buss it could be a track that is bypassing the master buss or a send.  You will need to track down why there is this apparent discrepancy between the Master Buss and the Mani Outs. This is assuming that you have the faders on the main out and trim set to unity.
 
The way the Inspector works is the same for tracks as well as buses. 

Hey, John.  Master and L-R are unity (0 db).
 
I appreciate all the good opinions and advice.  The question here is just why these meters do not match, which is something I have never seen before.
 
The Bob Katz's method is great, especially for those seeking a greater dynamic range in their product, but I am trying to get the last couple of tracks done on an album and this is not a good time to adopt a completely different methodology and recalibrate everything (although this is good information to consider for the future).  Folks may be making some assumptions about what I am doing or what my loudness perceptions are.  I have a compressor/limiter on the master bus for a specific reason unique to this track.  Consider also that people sometimes release online previews of music that will be mastered and pressed later, so the process steps may be different.
 
Thanks.

Hi, Konrad.
 
I've been having a play around to see if I could duplicate this.
 
As John mentioned, do you have any tracks or busses whose outs are assigned to your main outs by mistake, instead of through the Master?
 
Just out of interest (clutching at straws), what limiter are you using?
 
Hope you get it sorted quickly.

Jonathan, I think I misread what John was saying and you have pointed me to a good possibility.  I do have a quirk that sometimes tracks go to Main (VS-700) instead of Master and since the project has a lot of tracks (63, in fact), that is really a good possibility--and could explain why I am getting frustrated with the mix and peaks.
 
I have another song loaded now, but will absolutely check that later.  In fact, I am a bit embarrassed I didn't think of that; but, after all, I am The Mighty Konrad, not The Perfect Konrad.
 
And thanks again to the others who took time to make other good suggestions.

Konrad if you think you are the only one to encounter these things or don't think of the answer right away it is only because we have been around awhile or have the experience of fumbling through these things ourselves. We weren't born with these answers.
 
What I like about your posts is you are unafraid to ask. To me that is a wise way to be. By asking you not only help yourself but you help others that wont ask.
 
You do your part in helping with good answers to questions. 

John, You made my day.  Take care, bro.

Good point about not changing your approach in the middle of something. That is a good idea for sure. But my approach is good to use right from the start of an album production especially. It produces a very consistent result for all your tracks for mastering.
 
Mixing into a two buss compressor is also OK too as I do it sometimes myself depending on the project and what the outcome has to be. But I see it is only a slight partial mastering type compression and it does not need to be heavy to be effective. Limiting is not needed at all with my approach during mixing.
 
Many though don't have a plan when it comes to maintaining signal levels on tracks and busses. Peak metering is very ineffective at doing this and it only shows you one small aspect to your signal and nothing about the rms values of the signal that lie beneath the peak values. Only a VU meter can tell you this.
 
When you do maintain correct rms levels on tracks especially, you never have to add gain anywhere to a track during the mix. Mixing is easy and painless because all the tracks have a very similar amount of energy in them.
 
The drums and percussion sounds on individual tracks especially need a slightly different approach and it is here that the peak metering is very helpful. But by the time all the drums are sent to a buss though, the rms meter will start showing you the true picture and will respond very well usually even over a drum buss. There is sufficient rms power in the total drum sound to move the VU the right amount.
 
This advice may be different though to what the OP is experiencing. I think he may be having a separate issue but what I am suggesting is also a good approcah to signal levels in general. It may be the VStudio that is doing soemthing strange to the signal routing.