just for completeness: my best pre-OSX remote desktop experience was Timbuktu.
I still remember controlling a friend's Mac Plus over telephone line with a modem at 19kbit or so and it really worked well. A stunning experience back in the days.
(the trick was that the software didn't transmit screen bits, but just the respective toolbox trap codes to redraw the screen... smart)
As already mentioned: I wouldn't network a machine with active music applications at all.
It steals too much from PCI bus as from CPU.
The TDM Adat Bridge is a very good solution to built a communication bus between 2 machines.
It doesn't change audio by multiple conversions and saves a lot of cables
But it can also be done the analog way - those old Digidesign 88x boxes come cheapo today.
(myself using a 882/20 to exchange data with an iPad - works great)
The supposed quality loss by extra conversion steps is barely existing, if at all (imh ears).