the gem is in an very interesting machine which was at Frankfurt in 2 guises. It tries to put everything into one box, cd writer, hard disk, sample reader etc so is not really comparable to the 7000 in features or price. I take the view that many of these extra functions I have already so do not want to pay twice for them to be duplicated in a big and heavy box. But if you want a one box cd production plant it fits the bill. But I think wave editing on a laptop is much superior, and found it strange that this top of the line machine is still only 64 poly.