I just picked up a focusrite 212  to use with my laptop.  A Dell inspiron with an i3 2370M cpu @ 240ghz  4 gig ram windows 8.1.  I just installed platinum on it and installed the newest focusrite drivers.  No matter what I do I can not get sonar to run in 24 bit.  In edit/preferences I have (sonar) it set to 24 bit (actually I can't change that for some reason) If I change to 48 k it makes no difference.  On the tool bar right next to the tempo it shows 16 bit. the focusrite control panel seems very limited as to what it will do.
   what is the problem?

To change the default project audio bit depth go to Preferences > File > Audio Data and set the Record Bit Depth.

Thanks!! that did the trick!
 

It's easy to get things mixed up with all these clock rates and bit depths. Sonar actually converts audio to 32 bit by default.