This is among the silliest workarounds you’re going to see here.
I don’t record music per se, but zaps zings and music beds for radio production. My retired junker computer is still loaded with all my old favorite 32-bit VSTs, while my nice shiny refurb i5 is humming along with Ardour. I still like the sounds of my old plugins so I don’t want to give them up.
Literally “out of the box,” I just run a MIDI cable from Ardour out to the junker with my chosen VST in a SAVIHost wrapper and send the audio back to my mixer (and Ardour) in real time. There is a tiny bit of delay I have to clean up later. Basically, I’m treating my junker as an external synth instrument, which some seem to forget is perfectly OK.
Comments are welcome, but remember, nobody said it all has to be done inside one computer.