Multi-computer audio: DAWs, rendering, etc.

[Kanthos]

My current machine is pretty good, except for the processor. The machine is a 2.4 GHz Intel of some sort that I've had since April, 2003, but I've done some upgrades on it, and it has a lot of hard drive space, 2 GB of RAM, and pretty much everything else I'd want for audio. I still don't get the performance I want though, and seem to be pushing CPU limits without doing a whole lot in FL Studio.

Obviously, getting a new machine is one solution, and one I'm considering, but another would be to get a second machine and use both together. A second machine has a lot of appeal in the near future. My wife and I are looking to buy a house (we rent an apartment now), which would, among other things, give me a room to use as a studio and require me to take a single-train commute to work every day. We also spend most of our time together when we're in the house; even if I'm doing stuff on my computer and she's using hers, we're in the same room. That won't work if I have a separate studio, so one possibility is to get a new laptop that I can use on the train and around the house, connecting it somehow to my existing desktop to get better performance and so on for music.

What kinds of setups could I get out of having two computers? Would it be realistic to, say, compose/arrange/remix on one using lower-quality or lower-memory use samples/soundfonts and then use both machines to use better-quality samples (for example, doing a full orchestral arrangement in EWQL SO) and render the audio?

How would that kind of thing work? Do any DAWs let you specify some channels to be played back on a different machine? Does anyone here have experience with this kind of thing, or know of some online guide to doing this? I'll be looking around the Internet myself too, but if someone else knows about this and wouldn't mind helping me out, I'd like to hear from you.

EDIT: I should also add that ideally, I'd like a dual-machine setup with FL Studio, so I don't have to go out and get another DAW, but I'm not excluding the possibility of switching DAWs if there's no way around it.

[zircon]

Multi-DAW setups are not uncommon in the pro audio world. There are three main ways of doing it.

1. Send out MIDI data from a host (sequencer) computer to other computers, through MIDI cables. The other computers receive the signals, generate audio, and send it back via audio cables to your main computer to be recorded. Not necessarily the most efficient option, but it works.

2. A MIDI-over-lan program. This eliminates some of the cablework you need, and works great if all your computers are on a high speed LAN network.

3. FXTeleport. Perhaps the most efficient option, though it can take some software tweaking to get working properly. FXTeleport is like a MIDI over LAN software, but makes it even easier by letting your host computer open up and edit plugin GUIs running off networked computers. This gives you ultimate control - like using external DSP hardware.

www.fxteleport.com for more info on option 3.

There's also a new sampler that East West is producing and bundling with their new products, starting in March, that has networking integration built in. However, this probably will only work with East West products, and only new products.

Also, consider using DSP cards if you are using a lot of effects like EQ, comp, and reverb. $250-300 gets you a PowerCore Element card which has multiple DSP processors. You can run a decent amount of extra plugins as VSTs, but they drain no host CPU.