I have an Atom-powered laptop that records 28 tracks live simultaneously over two Tascam interfaces (US-1800 and US-1641) through ASIO4All - the worst possible setup. And it has worked great for years.
So if that works, your computer is fine.
Where things will become problematic is when you start using plug-ins and then nobody can say how much power is enough because each plug-in is different. But Sonar is a mature product with helpful tricks for those older machines. For example you can freeze tracks to save processing power. The plug-in on that track gets converted to an ordinary WAV file and does not use CPU anymore.
You will hear warnings about dropouts, etc. If that happens, just increase the buffer size. Dropout problems are usually due to causes unrelated to processing power. Folks here with super-pro machines report dropouts.
Latency does not arise when recording vocals or instruments over your interface, only when playing VST plug-in instruments live over a MIDI keyboard. You say you can't play, so that's never going to be an issue for you.
One day you may want to get a power machine. You can decide on that later. For now, you're good to go.
post edited by jpetersen - 2016/02/14 08:16:27