Yup... did the Stereo option. Like I said... not sure what that other file is but when I went to export a popup came up warning me I was creating two files. I'm guessing that is because my Scarlett has the regular monitor outs and then the ADAT/SPDIF outs. Not sure why Sonar brought my interface into play. I figured it wouldn't have anything to do with the hardware... but it does indeed sound like my mix. If there is a difference I can't hear it right now but perhaps an A/B is in order. Cheers. 

aaand now that the mental gears are turning in the right direction I'm assuming that when you select the Busses export option it will let you pick and choose what busses are being exported. From the I'm guessing that to do what I just did I could simply select the Master buss and then if I wanted stems I could select the various other busses. I'll have to try that out too. 

Man I love this place.

Holy crap. 130 views on this in an hour. Guess this is a popular topic. 

Beepster


Holy crap. 130 views on this in an hour. Guess this is a popular topic. 

  Just outa chit to do here

I am not an expert. I have only been working with Audio and Sonar for about a year. But i have been working on computers in general since the first consumer computers were available. I see that you are exporting the wave in 24bit. Nothing wrong with that as long as whatever you are trying to listen to the wave with can properly play 24bit audio. Have you tried to import your wave into sonar and see if it plays properly there. If it does then there is nothing wrong with the file. I had this same problem with a couple of projects of my own till I figured it out. Just for the heck of it Try to export it to 16bit (which any player can play) and see if the problem persist.

It's finally done... http://forum.cakewalk.com...21&mpage=1#2710421

Cheers!

Perhaps you are not enabling Track Automation.  That could make a gigantic difference.

Some tracks could be set to output directly to your sound card/interface instead of to Master.  When I create new tracks, they default to VS-700 MAIN (my primary audio output) but they used to default to Master, which is the documented and correct behavior.  I don't know if this is a consistent bug or related to some project corruption, but a user could also do it accidentally.

Similar to the above, you could have tracks routed to a bus (mix or effect) that is not going to Master.

Also, if you do not check Enable Live Output, you can hear some non-recorded or non-frozen tracks in your mix that will not be exported to the WAV/MP3.

Could be other stuff, but that comes to mind.

Try exporting with "fast bounced" off. You can turn this off form the menu that comes up when you click File>Export>Audio. I've found when bouncing final mixes, since there are so many plugins and other CPU extensive stuff going on, fast bounce can't do the trick. Try slow bouncing and see if that works. I've had a lot of "export sounding different from mix" experienced, but all were solved by slow bouncing. Takes a little longer, but hey, if it works it works.

Thanks, guys.

konradh... I don't think any of that stuff is causing problems. I didn't use much traditional automation aside from clip and one problematic note the refused to stay where I wanted in the mix. I did see the references to hardware stuff screwing around but again I don't think that is happening here but those tips are going in the brain trap for future endeavors. Cheers.

vaultwit... Cool. I did get a little confused looking at the Fast Bounce setting. I'm pretty sure now that last time I left it off but because I had actual MIDI data in this project I thought maybe it was necessary so I left it on. I got some suggestions to turn up the drums (well actually I'll have to turn everything else down because the drums are maxed) so if I'm feeling up to it tomorrow I may  experiment with a bunch of different approaches to mixdown. I need the experience anyway and I'm not sure I'll be able to go ahead with some of my other non DAW related plans tomorrow. Cheers.

i wouldn't worry about maxing the levels on drums.  fine tune the compression on them to bring up the overall volume and maybe for the kick, duck the other tracks slightly using a sidechain so it won't be that noticeable.