roll your own Receptor?

[scifizydeco]

I'm wondering if it's possible to build my own hardware VST player (ala Receptor) using a commercially available rackmount PC running a stacker/chainer program? My first choice w/b a 1U model from Superlogics.com w/ audio I/O and front panel USB port. I'll probably use a USB controller (M-audio 88SX or the like) so I don't need to eat up an expansion slot for a 5-pin MIDI port. This would leave the expansion slot available for a PCI hardware accelerator (if needed). My questions are: I'm concerned about MIDI/USB latency so would the native CPU (typically 2.66GHz Celeron but upgradeable Core Duo 2.66GHz) have enough horsepower or would an accelerator be recommended as well? Is Windows a good choice of OS or do others have better task latency performance? Any other concerns with this approach?