Feb 25
The New PC
Although I received it almost 1 month ago, I thought I should tell you about my recent computer purchase (Re: Computer Shopping)…
I am now the owner of a PC tweaked for pro audio from ADK Pro Audio Systems. Why ADK? The price and quality seemed comparable to offerings from Sonica. In fact ADK owner/founder Scott Chichelli told me that if I didn’t buy from him that I should buy from Sonica. Indeed, all of my email exchange with Scott was very personable. He was very helpful in working out the final configuration. Furthermore, the ADK folks have a great sense of humor (Check out their About Us page.)
(Some of) The Specs:
The new machine is powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU (under a large but very quiet CPU cooler with a cool blue glow), overclocked to 3.0 GHz. Since its running Windows XP Home, I only went with 2 GB of RAM (Win XP Home cannot use more than 2 GB of RAM for applications). The OS and handful of apps (SONAR PE, SpeedSoft VSampler 3, and a bunch of other VSTs and VSTis) are on an 80 gig drive, while I record audio to a 500 GB drive, and store my samples and SoundFonts on another 320 GB drive). For buring CDs and DVDs, I went with the less expensive LightScribe drive, as I’m tired of using gallons (a slight exageration) of printer ink to print decent looking disc labels. Since it takes just as long to burn a LightScribe label as it does to print a high-quality label in my ink jet printer - might as go for the LASER-etched labels that look more like commercial CDs than the paper labels.
The custom-built machine is housed in a sturdy 4-unit rack-mount case that’s about 20 inches deep. Much deeper than I expected, ruling it out for the typical 16″ deep rack case. Man, that case is big; But I love the black and blue motif (like you couldn’t tell that from this site). Even the front panel LEDs are blue. Cool.
Performance? I’ve run the diagnostics, and the machine smokes (figuratively)! In actual use, I haven’t done anything too tasking with it yet, but I can now play my VSTi’s in real time. Before with my 2.4 GHz P4, the latency was so severe, that I used an external sound module while playing, and later rendered the tracks with VSTi sounds. Now I don’t have to do that. 
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in time your power supply and cooling system will go unfortunaletly. I have an adk system. Many problems with bios reading system to hot etc…. since beginning. Should have gone with pcaudiolabs.
Sorry to hear about your experience. I’ve had my system for almost a year now, and have had no such cooling or BIOS reading problems. The system drive did have some trouble at first, but ADK promptly sent me a new, larger drive at no cost. The first drive was likely just one of those drives in so many thousand off of the assembly line with a defect that shows up have so many hours of use. Having formerly worked at both a disk drive test equipment manufacturer and a disk drive reapir facility, I know that such defects exists.