The OPC musician's computer

The first OPC from Orange Amps was made available in August 2010 and we've been closely following its development ever since. The bundled musician-related software has remained pretty much the same since launch but the musician's computer was given a serious hardware upgrade towards the close of 2011, and it's the new Core i7 system which I've been getting to know over the past few weeks. I've also managed to discuss some of the finer details with the driving force behind the OPC, and its lead developer, Charlie Cooper.

The Orange PC project started life when Cooper's father brought home some old Orange cabinets and the pair were lost for what to do with them until Cooper Junior suggested housing a computer inside the cab and putting a TV on top. The idea grew into an early OPC prototype that had two wires sticking out which were used to start the system and included an early Intel ITX motherboard with an Atom processor and a mATX PSU. After an encouraging showing at Musikmesse 2010, the first production model was announced in the middle of 2010. The few years since have been spent tweaking, fine tuning and refining the product into the slick, feature-packed production model you see here. So, is it any good?

What's in the box?

• A bright orange OPC computer/amplifier
• Power cable(s)
• USB extension cable
• Wired mouse and keyboard
• Quick start guide and activation sheet

Technical specs

The OPC runs on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit edition. The review unit I was sent is powered by a second generation Intel Core i7-2600K quad core processor running at 3.4 GHz with integrated Intel HD graphics on a Gigabyte H67N-USB3-B3 board. There's 8 GB of Kingston dual channel 1333MHz DDR3 memory over two slots, but there are four slots available for up to 16 GB of RAM. The 3.5-inch, 500 GB Seagate Barracuda ST3500413AS HDD spinning at 7200 RPM provides the onboard storage, there are five USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and one eSATA port, and a Samsung (TSST) slot-loading DVD re-writer. The unit also benefits from 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi with included antenna.

The OPC will need to be connected to a monitor or TV (not supplied) to interact with the software, catered for by two HDMI ports and one VGA connection. To the top of the unit is a 24-bit/96Hz ultra low latency instrument input next to a microphone/keyboard/instrument input with a 20 dB boost switch. These inputs feed into the OPC Sound Card, which Cooper says is "Orange's solution to getting a cleaner guitar signal and eliminating latency, while providing more recording options for vocals/keyboard/bass etc. - it is optimized for this computer configuration."