Multiple Location Recording Basic Questions..

Greetings,
 
I have a powerful tower machine that I run Sonar Platinum on which I mainly use at home. I now need to visit a friends house to record vocals to then return home to mix. For the remote recording, I will use an i5 laptop to do this. Both machines have Sonar Platinum on them.
 
My question:
 
While I know I can simply copy the entire project file to the laptop and then copy it back to the desktop, is this the "Best" method to use for what I need?
 
What do others do in this situation?
 
Thanks,
 
JB 
 
 

you could simply install audacity or reaper to do the recording bits. then copy over the wav files to your sonar station when you get home. the A2D conversion will have the bigget impact on the quality of the recording (beside the mics, vox etc :-) )
 
alternative - buy a copy of the sonar artist so you have the familiar UI.

OP has the app on both machines.

By my read, the question is whether to bring over the whole project to perform with or a new project with just the one track of the current state of the project.

Benefit of the bounce method...
Project is small and simple.
IO is reduced.
Processor load is reduced because the track is printed.
You may be able to work with lower sample buffer and have reduced risk of dropout.

Complication...
You have to merge the projects when you get home.

Alternative...
Copy the whole project to the laptop and hope latency is sufficiently low.

If you find latency is not sufficiently low, given that you have the whole project, you can make the new smaller project on the spot.

You have to work within your constraints. I would think the smaller project would be simpler.

One thing I didn't initially mention... the smaller project may help the laptop stay cooler and reduce fan noise.

I would be happy to move the whole project but this will depend on if the laptop has all the same plugins and sound libraries installed.  I work between surface/laptop/desktop and it is very easy to move project between the laptop and desktop because I keep the plugins in sync.  I have to think more about projects I want to work on using the surface because it does not have everything installed. 

All excellent input!
 
Thanks ALL 

I do this a lot. My laptop is from 2008. I keep both the laptop and main DAW up to date with CCC.
I don't use a lot of 3rd party plugs so both machines will load and play without issue. 
It is one reason I like Sonar, the ability to run on 2 machines. And tank goodness we get 2 copies of AD2. 
 
 
Songs are in project folders. And often the songs are in an album folder. The album or project folder is dated 
"Joe 04-08 2017"  
So all I need to do is copy the song or the album folder from machine to machine  and re date them to keep track. Way simple. 
 I have the 2 exact copies of the project on each machine. 
 
 
 
 
So it's like this: 
 
Once I have a good bed track for the song I save it to my main DAW.
I immediately "save as"   to a external dive putting it in a pre made "album" folder ( with date)  
Or I might copy paste the folder directly using Explorer. 
From the External drive it is copied to the laptop. 
I then go on location to the guest artists studio/ home and we record their part(s)
I re date the folder and copy it back to the external drive.
There will now be 2 versions on the external dive , great for back up redundancy.
Copy this new folder back to my main DAW and now I work with the new updated version,
Because there is back ups on the external drive and the laptop I can safely delete the original version, or you could keep them and file them in a back up drive out of harms way.  your choice. 
 
 

Sanderxpander

Doesn't your computer get hot and run a noisy fan? Just curious.

This is why I avoid an over powered laptop.