In answering I will try to be fair to all involved (I’ve got to say that I’m really touched by some of the nice things users have said about me recently at greatidea.com)
On price-point, the 2 systems seem to be competitors (especially since EMU raised the price of Paris Pro—BTW, there’s no real difference between the black and the new blue systems … guess they had to cover their marketing costs…and don’t PT users feel better having paid more?)
Both are relatively easy to use systems—if you’re comfortable in a recording studio environment, transferring those concepts is a piece of cake.
My initial impression, first starting with Mixtreme a year ago, and R.ed in December, was
FREEDOM FROM PROPRIETARY HARDWARE! A big one! Any I/O with TDIF is fair game, and Soundscape offers a wide variety of I/O options, for customized solutions.
Use multiple software applications at one time, streaming into Soundscape!
Freedom from crashing—REALLY reliable—not dependent on the PC (R.ed only uses the PC for display purposes—it has its’ own drives, and at least 1 removable bay—a snap to change!)
High quality plugins—and there ARE more on the way (on the other hand, I don’t believe ID has ever released their own plugins, which should be a red flag… ;)
Runs on practically anything—like my aging Gateway PII 266.
Portability-R.ed can connect to a PC laptop through a printer port cable (this is also a solution for PCs that don’t offer an Iso slot.) In one very small rack case I now have a completely portable, completely professional solution!
Supported by the guys who invented it in 1993 -- and they STILL support their original SSHDR1!
This last point is huge— DAW’s have never been an area of primary focus for EMU (remember Darwin?), and Paris was an inherited product engineers. Engineers HATE inheriting someone else’s work. EMU has been able to bring PARIS to maturity (pretty much what it was spec’d out to do) but I have my doubts how they can take it further. They have a VERY limited staff (1 PC and 1 Mac support guy, and they have hired a few engineers.)
Let the games begin!
Bert Neikirk
Neikirk Audio, Inc.
toll-free (866)NEIKIRK
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GAW, I would like to add that Paris was "focused enginee
GAW,
I would like to add
that Paris was "focused engineered" to an entirely different demographic and feature structure. R.Ed was engineered as a professional solution and alternative to the now mainstream systems, that could deal with the workloads and demands of the high-end work environment in a very efficient and reliable way. Paris was designed to accommodate musicians that did not have the budgets for the bigger systems (despite renaming it "Paris Pro", it's still the same system underneath.)
However, if we would take a deep look into how both systems accomplish their tasks, e.g. how audio and processing of the audio is handled, we will see the two very different approaches at work. Without getting into specifics and details, again even in the design approaches we see the 2 very different “End Goals” of each product. The way a device handles its processing and the architecture of each system should weigh more in the decision making process, than in brand name or advertising dollar.
Regards