Ugh... Why does my export sound completely different than my mix?

I've double checked everything but for some reason the export is eating my rhythm guitars (they are still there but really low and thin) and the resulting wave sounds "off" in general. This is not the mix I created. I'm exporting from 96k 24 bit to 96k 24 bit because I want to toss it in a new project to master the stereo wave. All mix enables are on. Dithering is set to none. Pretty much everything looks to be right. I need suggestions here because I am at a complete loss. :-(

Cheers.

I get this as well, I always have since Sonar 2 days. I double, triple check all my busses and sends and mix one thing and the exported wav is a very different story....

To my ears yes. I could never get to the bottom of it. I have a good friend who's a real, proper, proper engineer and he could never work it out when I showed/played him what I meant. Its as though the mix I make is never identical to the final exported .wav, not always in a bad way. But maybe I'm still doing something wrong after all this time. I'm sure there are others who can identify what's going on, you just happened to ask a question that happens to me! I sometimes wonder if I'm going mad! Good luck, let the more experienced weigh in. PS. As an example, I just did a track with some flutes. I mixed them, spot on, exported the wav and the flutes were too loud??? That's what I get alot of.

were they midi flutes or audio recordings?

Oh... I missed the flute part in Jedi's post. My bad. 

Are you using 'entire mix' under export options?  If so, that sums the track / bus outputs together I believe - which would  change levels, given some tracks route to busses and others don't.  

If all tracks and busses route to a master bus, select 'audio output' (or something like that - I can't remember the exact semantics and I'm not at my DAW right now) under export options.  That should give you exactly what you're hearing from the master bus output.

Hope that helps.
Russ

Main Output as export option?

@UKJK... I'm thinking I might try and export using Buses (I guess that's called stems) and Main Outputs. I'd kind of like to see what happens with both and maybe have the individual buses will let me get the mix closer to where I want.

  We haven't met yet but I'm kind of a beginner so this stuff is all a little new to me. 

Thanks again Russ for giving me some ideas to check out. Cheers.

@UKJEDI & beep - ok, one thing you need to watch out for when dealing with audio is this... i'll give you an example too... 

on the audio track, open the inspector and click the track tab.  you'll see a header for audio snap with two options - online render and offline render. 

here's where the example comes in...
leave both settings on default.
with a small audio clip, control rightclick the right edge of the clip (it will turn yellow) and stretch the audio to 400%.  play it back. you'll notice a glitching stutter. 
now, right click the clip and select bounce to clips. 
play it back again. notice the difference???

ok, so undo the bounce you just did - play back and you'll hear the stutter again because it's a stretched clip. now, on offline render in the audio snap options, click and select "same as online". right click the clip again and select bounce to clips.  take a listen...
this time the stuttering is preserved with the clips.  
i've noticed this track setting can make a difference (small but noticeable) when dealing with looped content and linked or imported audio with tempo or pitch info.  

try changing all your audio tracks to "same as online" to see if that makes a diff.

@BEEP - make sure channel format is stereo not split mono.

  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. 

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

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.

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.

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.