for me, overweight and over priced, but you may think differently.Įmail me if you want - I'll answer any question on Logic.Whether you've just bought a new Mac loaded with macOS 10.12 Sierra for recording music or have been laying down sick beats in your bedroom for years, the decision of whether to upgrade from Garageband to Logic Pro X can be a tough one. Reason is a good intrument base, but I always thought the sequencer was poor. It's more for mixing, has amazing drag and drop loop capabilities but also a fairly solid sequencer. Not to be too biased, consider Ableton Live 6 (download the demo). Honest! If someone told you they got that on a Dell, you'd laugh and stick them on your ignore list. I use a modest MacBook with a gig of RAM running at 2.0ghz and I get latency on the internal audio of around 40 msecs. it uses the CoreDuo too, you get 2 CPU bars and it spreads the load (although it's possible for one meaty intrument to take up a whole core if you add enough effects). This doesn't happen in Logic, ever, unless you deliberately overload the system and start playing Quake.
In Windows I had some meaty setups, but you always got the odd stutter, latency and dropouts, especially when doing things on the screen. I really want the Yamaha CS80, but it's as expensive as Logic, so I am not going to buy it until I create something that really needs it.įinally hardware. You can add other Audio compatible intruments. As I said, you get 5 I think, in Logic and they're a great place to start, in fact at least 2 I would say are comparable feature wise with $200 standalone intruments and sound exceptionally good. You also get a load of plugins (the popular ones and a few suprises) and of course you can add your own plugins and synths. You get a funky FM synth, a couple of analogue synths and an amazing Synth+Sampler that can sound incredible.
There are a few differences, like a few less plugins and one of the sampler intruments has slightly more restrictions when it comes to editing waveforms, but that's it. It doesn't sound like you need Logic 'Pro'. There are a few things you need to get used to, but real pro stuff like being able to drag a midi track to an audio track and have it render (instantly) the entire audio track with all effects and recorded event, is something you don't get at this price in Cubase. I'd say Logic is probably the sweetest sequencer I have used so far.
I have used a crap load of sequencers in the past (those I have listed, plus Reason and Cakewalk in the old days and until I got rid of my PC recently, I also had Fruity Loops). I have never pulled out my credit card so fast in all my life. Do play around with Garage Band, as the workflow is similar (although massively cut down and you get far far better intruments in Logic) but Logic is great, I heartely recommend it - go and play with it in a music shop! I was lucky that a place opposite where I work had an Apple rep just as I went to ask about it and he demo'ed it for me for about 40 minutes. but seeing everything on the screen is a real pain. I use Logix Express + Ableton live along with several Audio Units such as the Moog Modular, Polysix and Monopoly (from Korg's Legacy Collection), and can still comfortably record 24-bit audio from multiple sources, adding real time effects. I use my MacBook for Logic Express and my 2.0ghz Core Duo/2GB RAM is more than enough - especially with an external Firewire 7200 RPM HDD. Logic Pro allows 192khz recording as well, Express 'limits' you to 96khz. However, you can workaround these limits very easily by bouncing tracks intelligently. Logic Express is lightyears ahead of Garage Band, just by the virtue of being able to use Re-wire, Audio Units and have the "Environment." I highly doubt you'll feel the need to go to Logic Pro, which simply gives you more plugins (which you can buy anyway) and removes input channel audio limit and changes the bus limit from 8 to 64.