$1000?! What program is that? I mean, Sound Forge 10 is great and it's less than half that.

Sonar 8.0 PE plus the Edirol FA-66 firewire interface and REAC drivers bundled together was about $1000.

I'm only working with one track usually though.

So you're working with one-track projects mostly? I'm guessing spoken-word, e.g. podcasts or audio books, perhaps? Or maybe live 2-track recordings? I'd still recommend freezing the track if you want to take a look at the waveform before exporting. 

Yes, SONAR's editing capabilities are limited, as they are in most recording- and mixing-oriented DAWs. Fortunately, most of us don't need anything more detailed than that. For those rare occasions when we do require deep editing, we turn to external tools such as Sound Forge, Adobe Audition or one of the freebies such as Audacity. The rest of the time, metering is sufficient to see what's going on.

Speaking of which, if you aren't currently using Voxengo SPAN, go grab a copy of this freebie immediately. SPAN will tell you most of what you need to know without having to look at waveforms at all.

You've got it right. I'm not that familiar with freezing tracks, what would be my work flow in this case? Drop an EQ and a compressor in the FX bin, then freeze the track and look at how the wave form changes? Also I'll give SPAN a try.

Well, I started doing just what I said in my last post and I only have to wait as long as one round of compression, even if I'm doing 3 stages and an EQ. So that's cool. Thanks for the tip!

So, is there a way I can reduce the time it takes to render the finished project? Or open existing projects?

For what your doing Sonar is not the proper software. You should use a dedicated wave editor like the ones mentioned. Some are even free, but the more you pay the more tools your get. Wave lab even shares the plug ins with Sonar and Cubase. The basic version is all you need and it's only $100. Would be WAY faster

 you will never loose anything recorded as it is streamed it is stored. 
It can be set to automatically number and name the tracks. 
As quick as your can hit "stop" and then "record" you get a new track running. 
I have been recording live this way since 2004. I record music , speech , sermons, plays and funerals. Afterwards the editing is super fast. 
Cut beginning and ends/ check peak level/ Normalize if needed/ Loudness Maximizer if needed/ analyze  peak RMS level. Eq.   rendering a track is about 5 seconds per minute of audio. 

And the waveform view is excellent. 

Sonar is excellent for making music. It is a multi track DAW. 
If all you are working with is a mono or stereo wave or MP3 ( it will record any format live) 
then look into a dedicated wave editor. 

Would love to try it but unfortunately the free trial still requires that you purchase a USB key.

Here is a free one to try http://www.wavosaur.com/

Is that any better than gold wave? We used gold wave for a long time with our old board but moved on to SONAR when we got our new board because we wanted higher quality recordings. If I move to another program for editing I want to make sure the final product is just as high quality as what I'm getting from SONAR.