Need help editing an audio clip in Sonar Platinum?

I'm sure this should be simple. I have a new album out and need to splice up the tracks to use as short sample clips for people to listen to on our website. I ripped my audio cd to mp3 and then imported my first track into Sonar. I then split the track and ended up with my 45 second clip. All good but here's the rub so to speak. The audio I imported was an mp3 and now when I export the 45 second clip, it converts the mp3 audio to mp3 again further degrading the sound quality and loudness of the clip. I just want to slice up the track for a short clip and extract that raw file without doing a second conversion. Is this possible or is there another way?
 
Thanks in advance.

Ya I was wondering why you would choose MP3? 
I 'm pretty sure you can open the CD in Windows explorer and drag and drop the wave files. 
If not for sure you can import the CD using any Wave editor. Not sure if Sonar can but all wave editors do this. Even the freebies.
 
And a Wave editor is a much easier way to crop those files,,, that's why they are called wave editors.  
You can do just about anything, add cross-fades, fade outs, add a bunch BEEPs to a whole song is another trick used to keep people from stealing. 
My favourite (almost a freebie)  is Gold Wave. You can try it for free and a lifetime membership is only $60. 
http://www.goldwave.ca/
 
http://www.wavosaur.com/
 
http://www.audacityteam.org/
 
 
 

An audio CD is encoded at 16bit at 44.1khz.   If you do everything at 16bit at 44.1khz, that is ripping to wave, your SONAR project and the final export at 16bit at 44.1khz, then, theoretically, there should be very little degradation of quality.

If your Sonar project has a higher bit depth (24bit for eg) or sample rate (48khz for eg) ,you could enable dithering on export

Certainly doing your initial rip as a wave will help keep the quality up there.....

I was able to solve the issue by using Audacity to splice up my clip and used LAME to encode it as an mp3 directly in Audacity. Using the same wav file and exporting to an mp3 in Sonar, that mp3 was a 1/4 of the volume of the LAME mp3 from Audacity. I've come to the conclusion that mp3 encoder in Sonar is not very good. Thoughts?

chuckebaby
Cakewalks encoder is the LAME encoder as well. Ive never had any issues with it.
Also there is no loss going from MP3 to MP3. once the file is converted, there is no further coding needed.
This is of course as long as the same setting/bit rate, exc is used.
 
My guess is there was some sort of routing issue, or a fader dropped somewhere, either the master bus fader (which should be left at 0db) or a track fader not at 0db.
OR...
You had a different bit rate on on your export.

I will check this Chuck but can you clear something up for me on the routing issue. If I'm building a track with guitar, EZ Drummer, EZ Keys, midi bass etc... should all of these be routed to the Master on the output? I have the option of Master or two settings on my Tascam US1800 "1 & 2" and "3 & 4". Sorry for the newb question. I'm still trying to get my routing and set up correct. Thanks in advance. 

ya Johnny pretty much said it all.
Run everything to your Master bus, then the Master bus feeds the hardware output.
 
However, you don't always have to route all your individual tracks directly to your Master bus though.
For example, its okay to sub group (send all guitars, send all drums, Exc) to a Bus group.
but then that bus group goes to the Master bus / Ala then the Hardware bus.
 
This often how I set up my Desk:
 
All kit pieces (Kick, snare, toms, exc) are going to a bus called: "Drums" bus
All my guitars (Except Acoustics ) are going to my "Guitar" bus
All my vocals are going to my "VOX" bus
And so on and so on...
So all these Buses are then routed to the Master Bus (Then Master goes to hardware bus, Your Tascam)
 
This way when there is a project with 40 tracks you have a little control.
It also helps when you can "Mute" a Drum bus to mute all the drums to zero in on areas.
Its all about preference really. Some buses only have an FX in them (Reverb) this way you can have a send on a vocal that feeds the reverb bus.
 
That is the basics in a nut shell right there.
Later on you can experiment by routing another bus off your master bus.
I do this for metering purposes during Mastering and Mix Downs. because if you put Waves Peak on the default Master bus it wont be true. but don't worry about that right now.
Good luck