anyone have experience with PARIS DAW?

[versuviusx]

hey i just learned about Paris, and i was wondering if anyone could tell me more about it and the quality that it has. i was hoping to find something very clear in respect to the AD converters. also does anyone which model numbers are good and which ones to stay away from? please let me know.

[Auxillary]

Paris = dead.

well more like on life support.

[E-cue]

My experence with Paris was a horrible one. The 1st time I tried it, I was at GuitarCenter and I literally could not play a demo session they had ready there(Bundle 3 system). The system crashed on us 3 times (and countless 'Data Can Not Be Streamed Fast Enough' errors), and as I was walking out the door, a 4th time. The faders felt silly then, and still do now. The system is also louder, in terms of fan noise, than most other DAW systems too. I came back a month later, same problems. Strike two. So, I figured it was just the knuckleheads at Guitarcenter. Anyway, a year or so passes and I get a call from a friend working on a paris system (bundle 2, on version 2.1 I believe) for a project he was working on. It was an independent project and they had no budget so I lent them some of my gear, and did some of the tracking. Again, I ran into way too many inexcusable problems for me to consider it a "pro" system. It crashed on me a couple times (along with the familar "Data Can Not Be Streamed Fast Enough" errors), but since we were recording at the producer/engineer/artist's studio and not paying an arm and a leg for studio time, we didn't care as much. However, what really bugged me out (no pun intended) was that you could hear these weird ass audio bleeds when punching. We are talking about bleed in a digital effing system! It also felt like I had to fight the system: I'd hit play, and it would take a while to play, then when I would hit stop, it would take a while to stop. That bugged the hell out of me since I'm used to working very fast. Totally fucked the session's flow up. We couldn't get Paris to export files in a way a pro tools or logic session would read them. The producer had mentioned sometimes when he loaded in a project, his level sends wouldn't be the same either. (WTF?!) I've spoken to other people that have confirmed this as a bug, and version 3.0 was supposed to have addressed it. Any company that would ship a product with these HUGE defects is/was just asking to go out of business, and Paris doesn't exist anymore. Sonically, anything at low volumes on the Paris system sounded like tiny water balloons filled with mercury hitting your ears. I'm not a fan.

Tapeop did a review on it several zines back that was favorable.

[Family Hoof]

I've heard from friends who used it and had similar experiences to E-Cue. Crashed too much and couldn't support a decent track count. Pathetic for a host-based DAW. Also, a mastering engineer once advised me against some of their hardware because he said the conversion took place on the PCI card of this particular unit and thus would be too noisy for critical applications. Don't remember much else. Paris systems are completely unsupported and can be had for next to nothing.

[object88]

Also, a mastering engineer once advised me against some of their hardware because he said the conversion took place on the PCI card of this particular unit and thus would be too noisy for critical applications.

I'm the owner of a PARIS system, and I can tell you that's not true. All A/D and D/A conversion takes place in offboard hardware. All the different configurations shared a common PCI card, and that hosted a DSP and the interface to the converters.

I never had that much trouble with mine, but it was used fairly lightly, largely because the host system was strongly lacking. I've heard of systems with 64+ track counts, but I never used more than 8 at a time, and I did fine on a Pentium II 350. Given that I was doing very simplistic work, I never had to do punch-ins, or had the afore mentioned data-streaming errors.

I don't use my PARIS anymore (it's for sale if anyone's interested) as I work on Windows machines all day, and I'd rather either a) use dedicated hardware in my spare time, or b) at least not use Windows.

[midiot]

I use Paris all of the time. It has its up and downs. Defintely not worth getting into if you are short of patience. It takes some configuring to get it to run correctly.

Paris also is a no, if you are looking to do any sequencing. As you can always sync it to another program such as Cubase, I would suggest going a different route all together.

But all in all, I think Paris has a great sound. But I think it really comes down to what you put into it and what you are able to get out of it. That goes for Paris, Pro Tools, etc etc..

p.s., Paris Pro 3 does have the capabilities of rendering files so that you may load them into other DAWs.

[small sound]

I wrote the piece in Tape Op a couple issues back. It's dead in the fact that EMU doesn't make it anymore. There is a group of users trying to keep it alive and got some access to some source code and have developed some new host based plug ins and such.

As far as stability, mine is rock solid. I've done tons of punches, mixes, and all that and never had any major issues. From my experience is was designed to feel like mixer/tape based system yet have full recall and digital editing capabilites. I think it's great at that. It's not a sequencer, it's not designed to be compatible with lots of other systems. The other thing is everyone I know has always raved about how good it sounds. Doesn't sound like digital, can be pushed much like tape without getting nasty digital clipping.

You can get systems cheap. It's all a trade off. I think most people will be blown away by how easy it is to get a big sounding mix. But it's old, no longer supported. Kinda like an analog 24 track!