I have a 10 track project. These are separate songs. Basically “master tracks”.
If I solo one for export it takes 5 minutes. Looks like Cubase still processing those muted tracks just doesn’t include it in the final mixdown (which is a very inefficient programming)
If I actually disable other tracks it takes 1.
Shouldn’t be like that.
TBH, the description is very vague…
Soloing isn’t used for exports. It is just a monitoring feature.
What’s vague about it?
Why can’t be soloing/muting used for exports? There are some scenarios. If I want to export a few versions of a song, I would mute respected tracks in those versions. In my case I was doing sort of “pre-masterring” where I had to move mixbuss chain from the songs separately because Cubase engine was completely botching processing on export and creating all kinds of mess.
So I solo one track, export it with the mixbuss chain, move on to the next. Solo to match levels etc.
What @st10ss said: Soloing/Muting is about monitoring a track - it serves a different purpose. What you describe is expected behaviour in a DAW.
Soloing only.
Mute is part of a mix down. Solos should be avoided in this context.
The solo bus is not what hear when you play back a track. It is different. (OK, sometimes it is exactly the same, but that is not a guarantee)
Since the OPs misconceptions have been addressed, I don’t think it’s a detraction to ask…. AI aside, you’re saying enabling Solo on one or more tracks routes that to an “inferred dedicated” solo bus?
I can’t actually find anything to confirm this other than AI, which (interestingly enough) has multiple models confirm it exists, and then says it was wrong when asked for citations - both Gemini and ChatGPT confirmed “solo bus” existed, then denied it, and Grok started off saying “no, it doesn’t.“ I only bring this up so that we don’t bring AI junk into the mix 
(pun intended).
Is the “solo bus” a conflation of the “Listen” functionality? To ask another way, are you saying that (by way of example) soloing 2 tracks, which would automatically mute other tracks, would somehow result in a different signal path than just muting all other tracks other than the 2 example tracks? If so, how and where does that manifest itself?
To be honest I don’t really care if it’s “intended” or not or what “purpose” it’s serving. I decide what purpose it’s serving. The purpose is “not being included in the mixdown”.
Am I able to suddenly activate the track in the middle of the export? I don’t think so. If a track is muted it means it’s muted AND not included in the processing. Cubase should be smart enough to figure that part out.
That’s just not how things work. A muted track can easily be toggled/automated in and out of mute state. It needs to stay in the path. A disabled track is, well, disabled and out of the big picture until you decide to re-enable it. Not the same, but somewhat similar to, bypassing versus disabling a plugin.
Shouldn’t be unthinkable that Cubase could check if a track is muted and no mute automation exists before doing an offline export.
Sounds like a feature request though.
Mute automation is doing exactly this.