Mentor vs Version 7

[liger]

As much as I love restoring audio, for me it's just a hobby and I don't have money to burn on every new software. (Duh, I'm still on Millenium). Mentor sounds great now but I was originally planning on waiting for version 7 to upgrade. What's the release schedule on 7 and would Millenium+Mentor be comparable to version 7 for a hobbiest?
-Doug

[Craig Maier]

Millennium plus Mentor would not be equal to DC7. Mentor is quite a different concept compared to the traditional Diamond Cut Audio Software Products in that it's focus is on ease of use. Our other products focus has been on comprehensiveness of features.

So, most professionals and most serious audio hobbiests like the full featured software like DC6. If you want ease of use coupled with excellent adaptive (automatic) noise reduction performance, then consider Mentor with the tradeoff being a minimization of flexibility.

The learning curve for Mentor is probably about 1 hour. The learning curve for the other products (DC6, etc) is around 12 hours, and because of the flexibility provided, folks still learn more and more even after a year of use. The number of combinations of things that can be done with standard Diamond Cut Software is almost limitless, whereas Mentor is very limited, but very effective because of its automation.

I hope that this helps in differentiating the products.

[liger]

Thanks Craig. I'll check out the Mentor demo but I think I really want DC7. Is there a ballpark release schedule there?

[Craig Maier]

I have no ballpark estimation of a release date. I can only say that there is quite a bit of work to be done yet. And, after all of the features are incorporated in DC7, then we will have an extensive Beta testing program before we release it.

[Lord Theo]

Mentor/DC6

Why not use Mentor's fine noise reduction, then import the file into DC6?

[Dan McDonald]

Hey Theo -

I did do that myself. I never really liked the EZ Clean in DC6, but like the cleaning in Mentor much better, and have cleaned files in mentor, then worked on them in DC6. Best of both (at present) worlds.

Dan

[Lord Theo]

I agree....looking forward to DC7