I have a sort of pre/post issue i need to resolve... Sonar effects and EQ are applied post playback, not to the audio file itself, and this is almost always the best way to do things, but i have a special requirement for some recording i'm doing, where i need to apply EQ and possibly compression to a recording before it goes to disk.... .. .. So... can the input signal be assigned to the effects rack before going to disk, in order to avoid resorting to outboard EQ/effects?

No. Can I ask what you're trying to do? There may be a workaround.

If this will come up again I recommend a hardware mixer. One with the ability to add these effects to the streaming audio to your audio interface. 

If you have an interface that can do a digital loopback of an output to an input, you can re-record the effected signal on a second track in real time with only buffer latency added. An analog loopback will also work, but you'll have another round of D/A/D conversion.

Unless I am missing something, just add the FX to the track, then bounce that track + FX to a new track. Then mute the origional track. Boom, now you have your track + FX "printed to hard disc".

OK. Thanks for the ideas. So ya, i guess i should explain what i'm doing... I'm doing a little sleep study on the side, involving sleep apnea, and i need to record the breathing patterns of a subject which can sometimes get very quiet, so i have to set my preamp gain to maximum. The result of needing to record such low levels is that the slightest street noise and feet on floor noise from the apartment above overwhelms the breathing noise - mostly low frequency noise. OK, so so far i have simply filtered out the unwanted frequencies during playback, and that has work reasonably well, but the files are eight or nine hours long, so i am looking for a way to visually look for the sleep 'apnea' patterns in the recording instead of listening to the whole clip. ..... .... I can try bouncing the track with filters and compression on the track, but since it's a nine hour track, i thought i'd look for possible alternatives first. It is a huge file too even at 16 bits mono. It doesn't look like i can set it to 8 bits either... I guess i'll try bouncing it though, and let you know how long it takes. I can always abort the process if i need to, right?

try renting a high quality boom mounted shotgun mic and then using r-mix to isolate the frequencies. then maybe look into spectra plus or anothertool that does fft analysis with the ability to set markers.

heres an interestibg article... https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:BDNpU8zh9HUJ:www.extra.research.philips.com/hera/people/aarts/RMA_papers/aar10pu2.pdf+audio+microphone+recording+breathing+patterns+of+sleep+apnea+patients&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjBoHRuXsnk0fPYar3sJnxkrRBCyTHOqYM2T2BgfHo7f_3tFXRlLW0cdm_zgovVbgVJfn5oztA34NL5HN4xGinzEhWhp3yP7kumc2z3LA7lzXhsomU6vSw8wTG49cqXQv4vSbsj&sig=AHIEtbTm1y4cF_eKDzA2Yobujw1K8SSgNg

Sounds like loopback recording with an analog path would work fine in this instance. And since it's mono, even a single stereo input pair would suffice.