mixmkr
 
Actually you can patch around and accomplish.... noting the VSTi thread, which desires to be able to record a VSTi LIVE.  Using a plugin would be basically the same principle.  But, another reason why it would be nice to have track routing internally in Sonar so you could do such a thing.  Obviously not using CPU hungry plugs to kill you on latency, but many plugs would certainly be usable for this.  As a guitar player, using some of the FX plugs would be great to use live, NOT having to apply them after the track is recorded.  However at 24 bit, the need for compression going in, is greatly reduced and I'd just add that type of processing after the fact.

Other DAWs let you do that, using input channel, which is the shortest path, IMHO. As a guitar player, I appreciate being able to record a bunch of wet tracks through one single amp sim instance. The good folks at Cakewalk will eventually implement such a thing, I'm sure. 
 
I have a couple of 266XS, but I don't really find them all that useful. The 166 I haven't worked with but I hear it's a bit better.

I have now and in the padt owned various versions of the dbx 160 line... It is an excellent compressor, but can easily be a real pumping machine and not always what is desired...

That said, i gave had much wonderful success using them for vocals, bass, guitar, etc... Not always my goto, but a very useful tool and fir me better to use during recording than not compressing at that time...

There are some digital exceptions... When i was running my Soundscape interface, it had the ability to run any of my vst plugins euther prior to recording, or monitor only...

I now enjoy the same kind of ability using any Presonus VSL devices though here it is limited to their own compressor... Which is actually quite good

I enjoy the fairchild series, but typically goto either an 1176LN or an LA2a... Currently using the Cakewalk versions very happily...

Keni