Not sure where this post should go.
I have Sonar X3c Studio in my home studio.  It runs on a fairly powerful desktop, and everything works great!
For the first time I am asked to record on the road.  I wonder what hardware do Sonar users use on the road?

Help most appreciated.

For a long time before i3,i5, or i7 were even around I did not trust computers to do location recording. Nothing would be worse than to have to walk up to the band at the end of a show and have to tell them your rig crashed half way thru or that perfect performance of their most popular song was missed because the rig went down or the computer BSODed!
So I relied on 3 Adats and a BRC with a Soundtracs mixer to capture on site. The next day I would fly the tracks into the DAW and go to work. Now that laptops are getting more reliable I have been using a Toshiba laptop with an i7 and 16 gigs of RAM. I am using two Roland Studio Captures synched together for a total of 32 ins and 20 outs. I am getting good results though I have not had a project yet to utilize all the channels. Most projects are 24 tracks max. 
So far I am very happy and feel pretty secure on this system. Although, old habits die hard! I still in the back of my mind and picturing what to say if the #$%^ ever hits the fan! LOL!
The key is not to use an excessive amount of plugins while tracking live. I try to capture the individual tracks straight into the DAW, mic-interface-DAW. The Studio Captures have an auto setting that senses the volume of the signal coming in and sets the gain automatically on each channel not to clip. You may have to use your interfaces software mixer to do this from job to job. Or rely on a hardware mixer. The window dressing comes later in the mixdown. 

For live recording in clubs, I used several times two Edirol UA-101 USB interfaces together, for 16 simultaneous ins.
I began with an old (2008) Asus laptop (Intel dualcore P8600 2,4 GHz, 4 Go Ram, Vista 32, DD 5400 rpm), without any problems.
Now i use a HP DV7 (i7 720 QM, 4 Go ram, Win 7/64, DD 7200 rpm).
As Sidroe said, if you don't have a lot of plugs on the tracks (which is the case for live recording, i guess), the recording task doesn't need a very powerful PC, and you can handle 16 or 24 tracks easily with an ordinary laptop.
 
@Sidroe : I am looking for a new interface (to make my set up lighter, and perhaps better - ?), and i thought about the Studio Capture.
Are you satisfied with the latency you get (not for live recording, but for my own work) ?

I'm in the same boat. I didn't find anything that met my requirements, so I went with a top of the line MacBook Pro and Steinberg UR22 interface...it can handle anything I throw at it. My second choice was a new HP ZBook, but unfortunately they aren't available in Canada. If you are in the US, I would have a look at those. Even the previous model (Elite Book), are supposed to be good Sonar machines. They are actually endorsed by Cakewalk.

If all you are doing is recording audio, then almost any stable laptop will work. Audio streaming does not require much in the way of CPU or memory, but it does require a low DPCLAT reading. 
From now on I want to test any Laptop before I buy it. 
The most important component ( IMHO) is a fast, clean hard drive. 
My equipment would make most here laugh, but I have never had a dropout or a crash and have recorded ?? 500?? + hours of live band and shows. 
My interface is a Tascam us1642. Capable of 16 tracks ( 15/16 are SPDIF via my 01V)
Note: There is now the us1800 that replaced it and sell for $300. For the money this is one of the best deals on the market for channel count. It's solid built, rack mounted and road worthy. 
My laptops are 2004 Acer Aspire and a Toshiba Satellite 1.4Gz 1.5 Gig Ram XP 32bit. 7200 RPM Hard drives. 
 Both  optimized for DAW. DPCLAT around 50ms steady. 
recording @ 48hz. 12 to 16 tracks plus MID from a Keyboard. so 18 tracks. Only noticeable issue was very slow screen re-draws after you hit stop. 
I also used my wifes Lenovo Thinkpad i5 T420 a few times and was NOT allowed to optimize it. DPCLAT was around 50ms even with AV and who knows what going on in there. Amazing I thought. It was more than capable of the task and now the screen re-draws were not an issue.  I installed Sonar 8.5P 64 Bit. The Tascam Drivers work better under this environment. But there's no difference with Audio recording one way or the other.
It will depend on how critical what your recording is. I would not recomend a barebones system like this if your hoping to sell the product and make a living. Then you would want redundancy systems.. at least 3. And I think I would be using Logic anyways in that case. ( oh oh, shouldn't have said that)  

Do you have or need a bunch of preamps and other outboard or will you just be tracking direct outs from whatever desk is there?
 
A friend of mine still uses an Alesis HD24 for that kind of stuff. With the fireport adapter it's easy to port stuff to PC and it's super stable. They can be had relatively cheaply now. No preamps though and I think the HDs are IDE only.

Hi, TS! Sorry I was offline for a while. I am very happy with the Studio Captures so far. While running them on X2a it was kind of iffy. But since upgrading to X3c things have been markedly better. I have some other threads in the forums here about my experiences when I first bought and installed both the interfaces. There are some tricky spots about the installation you have to watch out for. And there is the auto-shutdown issue. For more details search the forum for my Studio-Capture experiences. I must say I am happier now with my gear than I have been in a long time. I also have a little Focusrite Saffire 6 USB interface that I take along for just quick remote recordings or composing in the hotel room. It's old but does the job very nicely.

If you don't have preamps of some sort you're going to have to have a mixer of some sort to adjust gain on each channel. I ran a MOTU 24io interface on a Sountracs Topaz Project 8 board for many, many years and it served me well. That board has dedicated tape ins and tape outs on each channel so the interface hooked up just as you would an analog tape machine. The MOTU had 24 ins and 24 outs on TRS plugs. Sad to say, it had no phantom power. I had to rely on the mixer for that. That was the main reason I jumped over to the Studio Captures. 24 of the 32 have built in gates, phantom, lo pass filters. Now I just lug around my laptop, the interfaces, and a 24/8 snake. I'm lovin' it!
 

BTW, I have a friend that uses the Alesis HD24 with the bay and he seems very happy. And yes, the HD is IDE only. In the next few years that could be a deal breaker. Yes, you will still need some sort of hardware mixer. As I stated before, I wouldn't be concerned about hauling a lot of FX around. When most people perform live they usually already have their sound set. You may have to tweak each persons rig a little to get a more recordable sound happening. For the most part, just concentrate on trying to get good clean recordings on each track without intruding on the player's territory too much. Mixdown is when you want to start bringing in any kind of effect or editing.
 

Sidroe
(...) It's old but does the job very nicely.

Just the same for my two old UA-101, which seem not to age !
 
Thanks for your answer ; i am going to look at your posts about the StudioCapture (i also thought the RME UFX, but it is not at the same price).