Sanderexpander says... "I won't hesitate to use an MP3 if it sounds good enough."
Well, and therein lies the difference between your approach to making music and mine, TOTALLY DIFFERENT ETHOS, and dictated by completely different personal standards. It is actually totally irrelevant to me what your ears tell you, just the same as you have made clear that data compression is completely irrelevant to you.
What you're basically saying is that if you were to make a song entirely of 'good sounding' MP3 waveforms, and then that song has the guts ripped out of it to be made an MP3 file all over again, it's not an issue to you. LOL, i do indeed feel sorry for you.
No one in here has yet mentioned anything about the sounds in the Roland Groove synth involving the RDAC compression i mentioned. Cakewalk? Are there ANY compressed sounds in Sonar, that's what i need to know. Very simple question i would have thought!