if you find sonar confusing and are spending too much time
getting lost in it you will just end up killing your creativity
and by the time you get it to do what you want it to do,
you may have lost all inspiration.
or you could study the manual find some tutorials etc..
i personally like to work with something simple
that allows me to lay my ideas down quick without losing the flow.
and yeah you will be very hard pressed to find a better noise reduction utility than audition.
you are doing the right thing by going from pre amp to line in.
to get a little more heat from the signal make sure the volumes not too low on the pre amp
and forcing you compensate by pushing the volume of the audigy
that will help the signal flow a little.
on your question regarding recording methods; yeah i usually get a general groove down first, set the loop locators, then record myself messing around; playing a variety of 8 bar loops that i think sound good, once ive recorded one, i mute it and record the next, until i have several or lose inspiration. then I see if i can work it all into some kind of arrangement by spreading it out across the track.
drums i cant help you with, it will just take practice, maybe study some songs
or down load some drum midi files, then you can see how they were programmed and play about with them.