Thanks for your help,

Alana

However, I still feel that Logic Studio is better overall value (even at more than double the price), given all the stuff and flexibility it offers. But if you don’t really need the flexibility or extras, Logic Express will work better for you (since it’s more streamlined) and will be cheaper.

In all fairness, I still use Garageband sometimes (although not to mix), so you can still make great music with limited tools.

By the way, which program do you use for editing music?

I will be frank though, Logic Express isn’t nearly as good a value proposition as Logic Studio. The reason why is that Logic Express has very few plug-ins or sample content. Basically Logic Express only allows you to record your music; there isn’t much in the way of professional mixing or effects plugins. It’s barely a step up from Garageband. If you are looking for cheap solutions to just record music, I would suggest looking at Reaper which can be had for very little money. If you’re serious though, you should take the plunge with Protools 8, or Logic Studio (using a student discount of course). I was trying to get manufacturers to send me review versions of software so I could run a Protools/Cubase/Ableton/Logic comparison, but they weren’t too receptive to the idea. When Ableton 8 comes out, I’ll probably buy it and do a review on it though. Cheers!

Any idea where you can get it from?

Thanks for the comment Sean, and I’ll definitely check out your site for more ableton-pro info.

If you are looking to heavily use a MIDI trigger for samples (ie. you can’t afford a drummer, so you’re going to use drum samples), Logic’s built in library is a ridiculously good value for the price. Logic also has, as was mentioned above, fantastic mixing tools. Space Designer is my favorite software reverb unit, and some of the analog synths are great. I use to work at, then ended up running, a small studio, and I would write and record instruments in Logic, record the artist on Protools (since all the nice gear was hooked up to Protools and my Logic key was personal), and then bring the project back home to mix in Logic. It’s a convoluted path, but it’s what I found worked the best between the two software titles.

Ableton Live, especially in its latest iteration, seems like a powerful application. I don’t have any experience with it, but all the material I read about it expounds its virtues as a tool for live performance. No doubt, it has great recording and mixing abilities but, for the money, Logic is built straight up for complete audio production. I do not have experience in Cubase, but at least two of my colleagues run successful small studio businesses with it and at least one was previously a Logic user (back when it was also available on PC).

I don’t want to spam your site with personal links, but I run a website called Key of Grey that talks about these types of issues and you can easily find some information that might help you. Click on the Featured Articles button to skip to my editorials and advice. Let me tell you something I learned…people who like Logic can be crazy lol. I caught so much crap when I suggested that I might even try Protools 8 even though I’m a Logic user. Anyways, I realize you wrote this article a couple months ago, but I hope I was still useful. Good luck with your recording! Oh, and if you’re worried about having to buy a Mac, you can always build a Hackintosh on the cheap.

Anyway you do have a point about getting Logic for the purpose of recording an album (which I am) and since Low Intensity’s music isn’t going towards performing live with LIVE and a laptop, i do have to reconsider about getting LIVE right now.

I was looking at the full suite that has all the bells and whistles but don’t really know how it’s samples would fair in a head on battle with LOGIC.

Like what I wrote in the post, I’d prob still go ahead with LIVE since I’m already started skiing on the learning slope rather than starting from the foot in LOGIC.

Meantime, I’ll do some research on Cubase. Yet no one really talks about Cubase. That can’t be good…