Hi everyone,
I am used to mixing Down from Sonar Platinum.
I would take the main mix out of a Presonus 24/96ai and hardwire it it to a high quality sound board on my other mix machine. I have down that for years with great success.
My mix machine is going to the graveyard and is being replaced by an Asus high speed gaming laptop with 16 gig of memory and do 500g solid state drive.
Is there a better way for instance with SPDIF or some other piece of hardware to accomplishment this. I am willing to spend some money but I am far from wealthy.
I have a bunch of usb interfaces ie; an audio box, behringer, m-audio for input but I am still am going analog to analog.
As well does anyone hava any ideas for playback from the laptop either. I have high end monitors. Event 2020bas on the Presonus studio live 24/96ai and jbl' monitors and audio monitors for the laptop. Any and all ideas will be appreciated.
Steve

From what I understand, you might as well render the file - bounce or export it.  You aren't getting any benefit by sending it out as analog to another machine (unless the high quality sound board is a Neve).  You seem to be saying you mixed in SONAR and output that sound from the Presonus and into the 2nd machine, just like in the analog days.  Skip the extra conversion steps and do it all in the box, unless you have some nice analog hardware you are passing the signal through.
 
@

In all my year since Cakewalk 4 I never even thought that was possible. It'seems a perfect solution not to lose anything digitally. I must try this in the morning.
 
Thanks
Steve

Every time you run audio through a converter ( A/D -D/A)  it is altered in some way, cheap converters will add all sorts of artifacts to the signal.. fortunately we probably can't hear it unless we have those "golden ears" they talk about.  
So when working with digital audio you strive to pass through a converter only once. And that converter should be the best you can afford. 
 
 

Steve,
 
be sure and read first - I just highlight all the tracks in a song and use the export function (there is a lengthy menu to adjust  so be sure and use help first).  You should be using the per song audio folder and your new sound file will be put there.  I name mix files "song name mix #" so I can find it after exporting.  Then I import the latest mix to a new track within the song, track name "mix" at the bottom of the Time Line (it is best to come up with a pattern for this type of operation that makes sense to you).  I bring the mix in at the project rates, ie. bit depth and sample rate, and mute it.  Then I open Sound Forge (or another instance of SONAR) and top and tail the mix (space before and after the actual song starts), master it and convert it to CD or mp3 for distribution.  The next mix of the song gets a new mix down and a new number that corresponds to the actual SONAR project, so that My Song 1 becomes my song 2, with a mix 2 at the bottom of the project.  A small change may result in mix 2a, b etc.  You never "lose" a version or mix.
 
Happy hunting

For my first 4 years of using Cakewalk ( guitar studio then Sonar 7) I used get my mix the way I wanted it in Cakewalk, open Wave Lab and set it to record "what you hear" and go back to Cakewalk and start the playback. 
I then would master the song in Wave Lab and that was that. 
I guess I keep reading about "export " on this forum and figured it out one day :) 
I don't know how bad it was using what you hear as I guess that stays digital. But it was playback in real time. 
Export certainly speeds things up. I still master in Wave Lab. 
I work similar to AT except I rarely keep other mixes of songs. If I don't like a mix I fix it and move on. I overwrite any old versions. 
 
keeping folders on a computer for any data, from pictures to word documents is important. 
The magic button is "save as". 
The you control were things are put