Blimey!
That Lame mp3 external encoder really does work well. There's an even easier, one-step, way to install it than the directions given in the earlier post though.
There's a help file that tells how to setup Lame(or other external encoders like Flak etc) from within Sonar. The help file is "ExtEncoderCFG.chm", and is in the program files\cakewalk\shared utilities folder. You still need to install Lame on your system, and have the Sonar installation Cd to access the encoder profiles(unless you want to create your own), but you don't have to install said profiles into the registry as a seperate step. The one-step process from within Sonar will do that for you.
I found it helpful to scan through the Lame documentation that comes in the Lame zip file first. It gives you some idea of what the various profile presets are in terms of quality of compression, and therefore, what profiles (there are five or so) you might want to install.
One quirk I found when doing this: when importing the profile off the CD, I had to import it twice to get it to show up in the "friendly names" list-you'll know what that means after you read the "extEncoderCFG.chm" help file. Not a problem, just a bit quirky.