I was looking for “Quick Look at the Proteus” so that I could provide a link to someone earlier today. I was sure I had done one, but apparently not.
I’m going to be lazy with this review and simply say that it is exactly as described on the MindPlace website… http://www.mindplace.com/MindPlace-Proteus-Light-Meditation-Machine/dp/B005NDED02
The Proteus falls neatly between the Sirius (single colour AS decoder, white standard with non-alterable internal sessions and music synchronising ColorPulse) and the Procyon (RGB tricolour, programmable internal sessions). The Proteus is a bicolour (standard red/green, with other colour combinations available). A comparison chart can be found here… http://www.mindplacesupport.com/content.php?151-Product-Features-Matrix
The 50 internal sessions are editable and new ones can be created with the Session Editor. You can download it to have a look… http://www.mindplacesupport.com/content.php?117-Proteus-Software
You can download the documentation… http://www.mindplacesupport.com/content.php?118-Proteus-Documentation
My personal opinions..
It is a more “pure” red/green AudioStrobe decoder than the Procyon. This is not necessarily a good thing – the Procyon has two AS modes (analog and digital) and several controls for colour mapping, brightness and threshold accessible via the Editor. The Proteus can be considered a “reference machine” – one suitable for verifying that AS encoded sessions for commercial distribution look right on any AS decoder.
The audio synthesis is more sophisticated than the Procyon’s – if the character of the audio is more important to you than three-colour visuals, the Proteus is the better choice. This is not significant if you’re using AudioStrobe as opposed to internal sessions – the audio then is fed via an auxilliar input, as with the Sirius or Procyon rather than utilising the interanl synthsiser.
The Session Editor is rather more difficult to understand than the Procyon’s. The light control is simpler but the audio synthesis has many more options. The Session Editor is well documented but trial and error is the only way to really appreciate what some of the settings really do.
The Proteus is a good machine in the very tidy package common to all the current MindPlace machines. The MindPlace Ganzframes are excellent – comfortable, robust and bright.
Based on price/featureset ratio it is unmatched.
Cheers,
Craig
