It’s quite normal to create a group track and have all those sub tracks go into the group track - and that’s used for overall control of pan/volume, and any other global inserts etc.
But it’s still not elegant as it sits seperate to the sub-tracks, what we really need are summing folders, so the parent item is treated as an audio capable group track for all the sub-tracks, and then when you expand it you can modify the subtracks individually.
Coming from Logic that was always a good feature of their track stacks functionality.
But now I’m more experienced with Cubase - it’s a little cumbersome, but at the same time, Cubase does allow you to lock (group) channels to either sides of the mixer using ‘zones’, so i create a group channel, set all the subs to output to that group, and using the zones list place the drum group (parent) on the right.
Other people create a folder track and drag the group channel and sub channels in there, and then name the folder track - which is the only real workaround to the problem of wanting to name channel 1 ‘kick’ without losing naming of what the actual instrument is - but that still leaves the mixer looking disorganised as folders not replicated on there, other than the visibility section.
Summing stacks/folders have been discussed many times in the past, but they just don’t seem to get the support or backing to make it a reality. But i agree, it would make Cubase so much better for multi-instruments. 