"I went through the PC loop for over a year before finally getting so pissed off that I decided to buy a dedicated hard disk recording system. My biggest grievance about PC's is that the PC specifications are actually so diverse amongst manufacturers of seemingly identical machines that you never know whether your PC is going to live up to the demands that the software you're running will place against it. There are just TOO many factors which will effect the recording and playback of your multi-track music with PC's; (hard disk speed, sound card throughput, PC memory, Operating System, CPU speed...etc...etc. as long as your arm). My experience is that I ended up trying to solve my performance problems (the main one being that my PC just juddered through multiple tracks of Audio playback and effects before usually just grinding to a halt), by spending money in all sorts of areas (replaced soundcard, added memory, replaced hard-drive). I'm sure that the PC can and is done "succesfully" (up to a point) but IMHO there are no guarantees and there may be hidden costs not obvious when you embark on the PC route. If you're serious about hard disk recording get a VS-880EX or VS-1680, if you're not and like to play with software (a lot) and enjoy frustration :-) go the PC route."

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<< There are other considerations
Like portability
Reliability
ease of use
recording on a computer is not so easy
No punch in foot switch on the computer
Lots of screen noise from the CRT picked up by guitars
you have to fumble with keyboard and mice etc
with the VS you have buttons and faders you can move easily
I find the VS faster, easier, portable, and clean clean clean
Use the computer for mastering
Use the VS for recording
JW >>

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*.. I agree....Well said, JW. Also.......another "important " thing to think
about......will the recorder you buy help or hurt your creative flow?
.....staring at a computer screen and using a mouse hinders me .........the VS
enables me to get my ideas down fast ( with the help of EZ routing)........and
that's important for some of us who lose our creative spontaneity pretty fast
....

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I'm with JW.......the VS for recording, and the computer for Mastering (and
burning CD's).......
- can't help but love the VS

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"I know of no one who has ever used a pro tape deck who is satisfied with
the current state of the art in Midi/Audio sequencers with generic
hardware. For editing and moving stuff around or playing loops back in
your sequence, they work fine. For actually trying to record a musical
instrument in real time, they pretty much all suck.

Latency times are variable, reliability is low, and timing is a very
iffy proposition. I would consider Paris to be the lowest cost computer
based tape deck replacement that you could use reliably and
productively. The stand alone VS-1680, DR-16, Darwin or similar boxes
tend to be much more solid than sequencer/audio card combos at this
point.

There's a reason. Both the stand alone boxes and Paris are integrated
hardware/software that has been optimised together. It's just going to
work better. It boils down to what your time is worth. If you have WAY
more time than money and love to spend hours, days and weeks trying to
make silk purses out of sow's ears, the Cubase/DSP combo will rock your
world. If you prefer actually making music, ante up for the real deal.
Just my opinion."

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"as i have both cubase vst and yamaha 02r, i guess i may reply
to this without guessing. :)

to me, the biggest advantage of paris vs.the yamaha 02r
(and if i remember correctly,the main selling point of the dsp factory is
that its almost the same as an 02r), the
biggest advantage is the SOUND. and this is the most important
thing after all right? i admit, i've been calling the 02r names
for some time now, so feel free to call me biased. but there
are some facts that can't be denied:

the effects are NOT a question of taste: no-one can seriously
compare the poor yamaha fx to the onboard effects that come
with paris. in paris, they are essential, while i think those two
little fx sections in the 02r were originally meant as a little
"goodie".
the eqs in paris are waaay better-but this may be a question of taste
(i dont think so, but i guess i have to say this). if you ever
have the chance to compare the eqs, listen closely to the following
details:
if you turn up i.e. the trebles with a hi-shelf filter at 10 khz
about 5 db in both the 02r and paris, you'll notice that the 02r
sounds more "extreme", a little like if you had turned up the
trebles in the 02r 10db, not 5. the paris eq tends to be very very
"soft", and thats what i want and probably not easy to do in the
digital world. this is what makes people call the sound "analog,
warm", whatever. its really only my 2 cents, but i say the paris
eq wins over the 02r eq 100:0.

did i understand you right that you don't like the fact that the
442 is an external box? be assured, it's the only way to do it - internal
converters will always suffer from the electric "smog" inside the
computer,
and even if people might tell you "but its shielded good enough",
i prefer to have my equipment outside the pc, thus avoiding
the need to shield the converters at all.

cubase VST vs.paris-i like the way of editing audio etc. in paris
much better, which is pretty astounding as i've been used to the
cubase interface and concept since the early atari days.
editing and mixing is much better in paris if you ask me.
BUT when it comes to midi, cubase of course wins, as paris yet
simply doesn't have any. right now, you have to sync another sequencer
to it (i.e.cubase, isn't that funny?), so cubase surely wins this one,
and will for some time, as the initial midi implementation in paris
wont be much more than the basics (record, playback, hopefully
at least quantize;-).

so i recommend paris over cubase/yamaha (surprise, surprise).
dont listen to people that may tell you "cubase vst is the future",
or "paris won't be supported by ensoniq for much longer" and all
this blah.
i've heard about cubase vst being the future for very long now, but
i don't see very much progress yet, and they sure had enough
time now to make this future a reality IMHO. and all the talk
about paris being "not open enough" to other systems doesn't
make much sense to me - you have an application (recording, editing,
and mixing audio) and need a system that does it right, correct?
well, paris does this very good, so what do i need asio drivers for? if i wanted to use cubase, i wouldn't have bought paris at all.

you'll see this kind of "closed architecture" systems in many "pro"-
studios, and this is for a good reason - it ensures that you have
a good, working system, and that's all you need. all these systems
have been called "dead next year", but they did not die yet ;-).
plus, with directX, vst mac and vst pc plug-in support and wav&sounddesigner file support, why would one call paris "closed"
anyway? this all doesn't make sense, at least not to me.

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Every time I get to the Holy Grail, they move it. Cake 8 is almost the Holy Grail, But tuning it up to get the most out of the system is going to require more time. The directX situation has improved dramatically in 8 vs. 6.01, which is still the most stable version for tracking. The most tracks I've tried to get was 20, on that, and, with some tweaking my system didn't break a sweat - that was after I discovered that 6.01 handles multi-port cards way better than single port cards. 8.01 is extremely stable with directX, but there are some annoying glitches. The theoretical track count with 8.01 should be close to the maximum. The best I've done so far is 13 tracks with 6 directX plugins running (2 hyperverbs, 1 chorus, 1 compressor, 1 echo effect, and one of something else I can't remember.

My system; PII300, 2940uw, cheetah, 160mb ram, Sonorus, korg digi mixer. Built it awl bah mahsef, thanky much