Sonar project set-up for online collaboration

Hi!
 
I'm trying to convince a writing partner to switch to Sonar, but he yet needs to see the streamlined workflow to splash out some money. 
 
Here's the situation:

• During pre-production I usually send mix stems out and receive individual guitar tracks.
• During pre-production it's all bounced to MP3 files for quick file transfer back and forth (although already recorded at 96 kHz in case some of it ends up in the product, in that case we can go back and dig out the 96kHz files)
• Occasionally my partner does some rearranging, but then I have to repeat the whole exercise based on a bounced mix I receive.
• Nevertheless, this is approach was simple and quite feasible, but now we are struggling with songs that contain several or gradual tempo changes.

 
When having Sonar at both ends, it would immediately solve all the tempo changes and marker transfer issues, but ...

1. I'd still want to send MP3s back and forth in pre-production ... still probably containing mix stems to keep it simple on his end ...
2. All synths and FX would have to be frozen because he'd be working off a much smaller set of toys ...

 
As I see it at the moment we're not gaining much from Sonar at both ends (but I might be missing a few things, hence the post). It looks like I still need to bounce buses to MP3, delete all tracks, send MP3s plus project file separately and he needs to import, ... so that would be just what we have now ...
 
 
 
 
 

I know this probably isn't easy, but a better approach might be to maintain a shared Dropbox folder where you could both gave access to a current copy of the project... Adding and overwriting when necessary...

Of course you would need good high speed transfers to make this feasible... A big job for large files, but would only require incremental updates in either direction?

Personally I find fast mail of thumb drives the most expedient...

Now with the mix selections it's easy enough to create needed mixes within the program for various work situations...

Keni

Now that we figured out how to transfer tempo tracks and markers between DAWs from different vendors, sticking to mix stems (bus exports) as MP3 seems to remain the most feasible approach for the way we work ...