How do you take 3 tracks and combine them into 1, without soloing them and exporting as you would an entire song?
I tried selecting them and going Tracks->Bounce to Track(s), but I got each track bounced down on separate tracks rather than combined into one new track.

That's the right process, just make sure you have the Source as Entire Mix and the Channel Format set to Stereo or Mono, depending on what you want the resulting track to be. Don't select Split Mono as that will split any stereo tracks into multiple Mono tracks. 

Route tracks through another bus and bounce the bus. It sounds like you are not using a Master bus, that would make this easier. Then soloing with bounce would work, no export required.

Create a new bus just for bouncing. Then assign the output(s) of the track(s) to that bus. Then in the Bounce To Tracks dialog, choose Buses for the Source Category and select the new bus you created. That will then bounce the mixed audio from that bus to a new single track.

Scott

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Thanks guys!
I have a question going a bit further into detail. Let me know if you have any idea why the result is as described.

I simply want to take 3 guitar mics and combine into one track and commit to that sound. Easy peasy. Just one mono track for that guitar sound. I route the 3 guitar tracks into the master out, solo those tracks, and go Edit->Bounce to Track(s), and select the source category as "Main Outputs".

So the tracks all get bounced to a new track. However, when I null test the new track against the other three, I can never get them to completely cancel each other out. I get real close but I have to turn the new track down by 3db.

By routing the tracks to a main out (not a master bus), having no FX on the tracks and no sends, wouldn't the result null out when the phase is switched on the new track?

I'm interested to now why you would want to bounce three tracks into one. I mean, when you have unlimited tracks available in Sonar to use anyway, why bounce, unless you have an issue with CPU/drive usage.

I had a Tascam 244 portastudio many years ago, which was a four track recorder, so bouncing on that was essential...

cheers

andy

I use Slate Digital VTM & VCC on each channel in my mixes, so if I have a 90+ track session I sometimes have to bounce things down to conserve CPU. This is a AMD Phenom II 3.3GHz processor. It's not too shabby.

Also, I've come to find that in having 70 tracks all playing at once will give my hard drive a major disk-read issue. It would be at 97% at some points during playback.

So I decided to commit to a guitar sound and bounce 4 mics down to a single rhythm track. Archive the others and I'm down to a single rhythm track.

Perhaps I need to up some setting somewhere, but most sessions I do aren't so large and I don't see any strain on the CPU or hard drive.

Ah, I see... 90+ tracks! That's a lot of tracks lol. I think the most I've ever used in a project was 40 or so and normally I only use between twenty ~ thirty.

Thanks for that

yea, none of my bizz but 90 tracks ?
things tend to get a little lost wouldn't you say ? like lost in the mix ? lol.
by recording 7 guitar tracks
2 panned hard r + l  / 2 at 3.oc +9.oc and one up the middle and then 2 more tracks for over dubbing solos
is about as fat as I get in a professional atmosphere.

but to each his own.

bouncing is final, theres no take backs when deleting those tracks.
and unless those guitar tracks are the last thing im doing in the mixing room, I wouldn't dare pretend to be that talented because when it comes time to send out a master and the guitar is a little out there
I can go back and make fine adjustments, on a bounce, I can not.
the track is ruined.

I'm just mixing.  I was given 90+ tracks.  It's my job to make sense of them all.  I archive tracks here and there, probably get down to around 70 tracks heard at some point throughout the project when I'm done.

Anything above 60 tracks gets kinda tough on the system at times if a lot are playing back at once, but thanks to freezing, archiving, track folders, etc, it's manageable.

But bouncing 4 mics on a guitar rig down to one single track is definitely a good idea otherwise you never commit.  Just get a great sound, and stick to it.  I don't delete anything, just archive it and hide.

This project in not the norm for me.  I don't often get 8 mics for rhythm guitar tracks (2 rhythm guitars with 4 mics each).  12 or so tracks for drums, 5-8 synths, 4 bass tracks (DI, Ampeg DI, Ampeg mic, Gallien Kruger mic), and stacks of vocals.  Sounds great once it's mixed, but definitely a lot to absorb at first.

Anywho, I followed the advice of one of the above posts and made a buss purely for bouncing and it worked well so thanks for that!