Gary,

What I usually do when recording a song is edit the midi tracks first (sort out the volume and the panning) then transfer the lot to an audio track using the creative card option "what you hear"

I then add my vocal track to a separate audio track, then find the balance in volume between the 2 audio tracks and after this is done mix the lot down to a final stereo audio track.

Am I doing something wrong here, is it better but maybe slower to have a separate audio track for each midi track?

Seems I have a lot to learn yet.

Regards
Jan