Hello again.

Within our church we have just set up a "broadcast audio" space anchored by two DA7's in tandem. The broadcast is for remote locations on campus to help with a space crunch as well as feed nurserys, the cafe' etc...

We bring all the channels off the stage by taking the direct outs off each channel of the FOH board. We pass the audio to the remote studio space over CAT5 via a mix of Audio Rails and Aviom systems depending on whether termination is ADAT or analog. So far everything is good but the onboard dynamic and EQ sections of the DA7's just aren't cutting it. On a whim (and somewhat in desperation having no substantial budget left for outboard processing) I bussed two banks of ADAT's (16 channels total) of the most critical signals via an M-Audio Lightbridge into an older Dell P4 running alternately Cubase 4 or Nuendo for test purposes, both performing equally well. I included my Liquid Mix into the equation and then just used plug ins on inserts to sweeten the channel before sending it back to the DA7's on some the remaining 2nd layer channels. Mix with the unprocessed channels, compensate a bit for latency and it sounds pretty sweet.

I set this all up using equipment from my stock so while I know that the Lightbridge and the Liquid Mix are perfect for the job, the great unknown is what would be my best bet for a solid serviceable computer to handle what is essentially just running a VST shell? I would like to keep it in the $500 to $750 range, perhaps used.

The Dell P4 that we have been using worked fine but is a low profile desktop unit with no PCI expandability, thus no firewire card (it has a couple of firewire ports that look like they were an afterthought and both the M-Audio and the Liquid Mix feed off firewire so I would like to give them some breathing room on their own bus) and no expandability should we want to go with something like a UAD card. Also I suspect it may be a bit underpowered as the CPU meter runs at about half with a multiband comp across 8 of the channels and while most of the processing load will fall on the Liquid Mix, I would still like the chance to add some extras on each channel if needed.

Would one of the kind PC folks out there be so good as to recommend some used models, Dell or whatever, that I might be looking out for? Or if you have something hanging around that you might want to repurpose......

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

J.....