See attached drawings of my studio layout please.

I love my little ole Line 6 GuitarPort no matter if I am using my Variax or any other guitars with it. The tones absolutely rock my socks off when used with my ESP LTD gear with active EMG pickups! The problem I ran into was the processing power required to have one PC running both the GuitarPort software and Cubase already handling a mess of tracks nad effects (ofcourse these days the software that talks to the Guitarport on it's PC has been replaced with GearBox).

So to solve the processing power problem I split all my guitar processing and recording tasks onto two separate PC's. PC1 runs GuitarPort and PC2 runs Cubase. Well because I had a great deal of inputs going into by Firebox I got tired of unplugging and plugging in inputs from different instruments, microphones, etc as I would record. So, I placed a mixer before the Firebox in my network of items. So when I want only the Guitarport signal from PC1 I simply mute everything else on the mixer. My levels are already adjusted and I am ready to go.

Well this all sounds good but try as this perfectionaist might, the tones that I pipe over into the Cubase PC (via the mixer from the Guitarport) just do not seem to have the same vibrance and sting. I am pretty happy with my little setup but think there might be a better way to do this without spending more money or losing any existing functionality. Again the whole reason for splitting onto two PC's is dedicating power to system functions like Guitarport Processing and Multi-Track Recording. PC2 that does Cubase is stripped down and does nothing else, only a minimum of an OS install, no additional bloatware, no antivirus, Win32's bells and graphics are all disabled and this system is plane Jane to perform to handle a max of tracks. I know ther are Firewire mixers; again...not looking to spend more or significantly alter my current studio, just looking for maybe one of you guys to put eyese on this and give me some tips that are obvious that I have not stumbled across and help me think outside the box. Thanks in advance.