Sonar on 2 PCs simultaneously for 2x processing power? 2nd PC is just a synth-player

I suppose it would work but I have to wonder if in the end any advantages outweigh the potential drawbacks.
 
My first thought was about how much effort I put into getting my current studio computer build to be as silent as possible. I'd hate to imagine what'd be like to try to work in a studio with two computers chugging away at the same time. 
 
My second thought is about how many of the synth plugs I use today sync to host clock for things like LFO's or on board time-based effects. I could see host sync being an issue if the plugin machine is just sitting parked and receiving MIDI notes from the master machine. You might be able to just set the tempo the same on both machines and be fine, but then again you might not. I would depend on the plugin in question I suppose. And either way, projects with any kind of tempo changes would be a challenge.

Then there's the flying everything in to a single two-track mix via spdif. This should work just fine. But you end up with a two track mix of your synths. I know I'm being nit picky here but lets face it, you can pick up a brand spanking new digital 8-track recorder for under $200 and record in pristine digital with twice as many tracks as the Beatles ever needed. But that limits you to 8 individual tracks. There are reasons we use DAW's. And one of those reasons is because you can have as many individual tracks as you need. So why would you want to limit yourself by burning all your synths down to a two-track mix?
 
Now to be fair you could easily get around the two-track mix limit by streaming each synth over spdif one at a time to separate tracks. But doing it that way then presents a very obvious question. If you're going to use a second machine to process your synths and then stream those synths over one at a time to separate tracks, why not just run the synths on the primary machine and freeze them? You're essentially doing the same thing by doing it that way and keeping your setup much simpler.

As has been said, I can't see that it's really worth all the effort. The freeze button is your best friend with soft synths once processing power starts to become an issue - once frozen it's just audio like anything else. You can even choose to apply fx or not at point of freezing, so you still have the flexibility to tweak them in real time if you like.

You can do this... and instead of midi you can connect an ethernet cable and use midioverlan... though it makes the most sense if you're going to load a bunch of ram-intensive orchestral samples that aren't tempo-synced.
 
But if you're going to connect with an ethernet cable why not use VEPro server mode.  This solves all the sync issues and the audio comes back to your main machine via ethernet so you don't have to route any audio.  It was designed to do exactly what you are looking to do.  Plus both computers will open/save as one project.
 
BTW I emailed support about this (I may run Sonar on 4 machines) and they didn't specifically give me the ok to violate the EULA but they implied with a nudge nudge wink wink that as long as I was the sole user they didn't have a problem with it.

The thought had crossed my mind once, I combatively came up with a good strategy.
I bought an Intel I7

PopStarWannabe

Matt why not use VEPro server mode.

It costs 285 Euros... Plus it is not faul-proof. It has some serious problem that they admitted to. I read on their forum...
 
Reaper has a feature called ReaMote that allows effects chains or even soft synths to be processed on e different machine via LAN.

 That's an affordable option. I've never used it.  VEPro is awesome though.

Thank you all for you input!

fresh101
This sort of thing use to be done a lot back in the day

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Yes, that's what I'm talking about.
However, looks like I've already been presented the actual viable option: Vienna Ensemble Pro. It's just that I can't afford any investment yet.
 
By the way, I came across this: https://www.audinate.com/products/software/dante-via
Has anyone had any experience with that one?

Have you looked at Cantabile?
Very nice VSTi host.
 
https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/about

Krokodilen_SX
 http://www.fx-max.com/fxt/product.html did work for me running vsts on a second pc

 
It has been abandoned for years now... Last listed operating system is Windows XP. So not sure if it works on 64-bit Windows 10...

Dante? Waves StudioGrid?

Yes, Jeff Evans, thank you!! That's what I wanted to hear.
 
When you mentioned the free Reaper plug ins you mean ReaStream, right?
 
 

Sanderxpander
Your license doesn't even officially allow you to run two copies of Sonar simultaneously.

Exact this I doubt. Shortly I bought a second license. Only to find out that it did not appear in my account - only to find out it is not possible to have two licenses of SPLT or Pro in the same account. It needed a while until I got my money back and the first bought license up and running again. If you want to have several licenses each of them needs an own account.