Well, looks like I haven't posted enough in order to put up a URL (as I discovered when the link to my new company website didn't work). BTW, the company is TECHnalysis Research and you just put those two words together and add a dot com to get to the site.
 
As for the Hightail URL, not sure how I'm going to post that...got any ideas?

Put some spaces in the address so it is not recognized by the software as a URL, for example
h t t p://some url
instead of
http://some url

Ah, got it...thanks. Still trying to get Hightail app loaded, but will post link shortly.

OK...here's the sample file.
h t t p s://www.hightail.com/download/ZUcxR0lYQVM1UjVBSXRVag

The first thing I would do is update the drivers and firmware of your interface (if applicable) in order to try and prevent it from happening again

Both the firmware and the driver are the latest version and I was able to create a clean new recording after the fact once I tweaked the Audio driver preference settings in Sonar, so I know I can be OK for future recordings, but was hoping to somehow fix this file.

Thank you for the sample. The file downloaded as a 32-bit float/44.1Khz (contrary to the OP), yet is noticeably "asymmetrical" and has severe clipping (after the 3.5s mark). I opened this with Adobe Audition, and Audition was having a very difficult time processing this wave file (i.e. it was hanging to even play it), which makes me wonder if the file was corrupted in some way (it is very unclear on "how" though).
 
In the interest of time, it may be best to redo this, as well as do a brief run prior to the actual recording to make sure. I will often set up a track, record a bit as a test, then simply delete that test audio and record on the same track so that I know the setup is good. Based on the clipping in this file, I think it would be very difficult to recover it (if even possible). I have seen the asymmetrical post once before (from Beepster, I believe?) but totally forget the "root cause" of that.

Sorry Bob, but I looked at/listened to the waveform and doubt it can be fixed. It's a digital issue...it's like it was encoded by some malevolent being, and you don't have the decoder.

I really appreciate you both checking out the file, thank you very much.
The outcome is, unfortunately, as I feared.
 
The weird thing is I did a clean install of Sonar X2a and the latest Fast Track Pro drivers on another notebook that I had recently wiped and put a clean install of Windows 7 on and using the default settings for everything, I ended up with the same type of garbled audio issue on that machine when I did a short recording test. In futzing around with things on the machine I originally had recorded this file on (which runs Windows 8.1) I did get things to work properly, so now I have to figure out what I did again.
Thanks again for the help and Craig, would be great to reconnect in more detail.
 
Bob O'Donnell

First, I highly recommend upgrading to X3. That was the first release since the Gibson acquisition and fortunately, Cakewalk did a really outstanding job on the launch and the subsequent updates. I'm definitely not saying X2 is the cause of your problem, but X3 is a really mature implementation of the X-series concept.
 
Second, you didn't indicate the driver rev or date but check out this thread:
 
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=344372
 
Also of course notebooks have their own issues, like you need to disable wi-fi before doing audio (and all the other usual cautions about preventing spikes and latency issues). I suspect the sample buffer setting may have been set too low in the file I heard. If other processes were going on, what would normally be an acceptable setting may require more sample buffers.