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Old 03-12-2013, 01:16 PM   #1
kristen
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Default Do i need Logic or is Garageband 11 enough?

I have a new minimac and use Reaper with it (same when I used it on a PC).

The minimac has Garageband 11 on it. I also spent 30 bucks for Mainstage from Apple which came with all gigs of Garageband loops. (good deal!)

I was thinking abot getting Logic Pro.
Is it really worth the 200 bucks price at Appple store?

What can it do for me that i can't do with Reaper and Garageband?
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Old 03-12-2013, 05:17 PM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kristen View Post
I have a new minimac and use Reaper with it (same when I used it on a PC).

The minimac has Garageband 11 on it. I also spent 30 bucks for Mainstage from Apple which came with all gigs of Garageband loops. (good deal!)

I was thinking abot getting Logic Pro.
Is it really worth the 200 bucks price at Appple store?

What can it do for me that i can't do with Reaper and Garageband?
Is it worth it? Absolutely. It used to be $999 a few years ago.

What does it do better than Reaper? The built-in content alone is excellent. Great presets, great sample libraries, great loops. It is a self-contained music making workstation. If you're starting fresh, get an apogee duet 2 or some such. You can't go wrong with that and Logic.

Features not found in Reaper: Score, quick swipe comping, skip-back recording.
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Old 03-12-2013, 05:37 PM   #3
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The other major advantage in Logic is the built-in sample player EXS-24.
You'd have to pay more than Logic's entire price to get Kontakt or Mach5 samplers.
Unfortunately there is a scarcity of samplers on OSX.

Plus with Logic you get Ultrabeat drum synth, Space Designer convolution reverb and guitar amps.

(oh crap, I don't want to talk myself into Logic if I can help it....)
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Old 03-13-2013, 01:03 PM   #4
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It really depends on what your workflow is. If you use midi sequencing and virtual instruments only in a basic role then not really. I regularly boot up all three of these, and if I need to do more than just capture a midi performance (IOW get into the fine editing points of it) I wouldn't want to do it in any of those but Logic. Plus, as mentioned, the bundled content is very useful and a great deal for $200.

But if you mostly capture live audio and use midi just to support that, and if instruments such as included in GB are good enough for what you want to do, then I'd say it's not a stretch to say you can do it with the other two just as well. There's a lot of overlap in those three programs but mostly when you stretch each one to their limits a bit. For your needs making the jump from the midi recording in GB and Reaper to Logic's may not give you anything you need more than you already have. Depends : )
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Old 03-13-2013, 01:26 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kristen View Post
I have a new minimac and use Reaper with it (same when I used it on a PC).

The minimac has Garageband 11 on it. I also spent 30 bucks for Mainstage from Apple which came with all gigs of Garageband loops. (good deal!)

I was thinking abot getting Logic Pro.
Is it really worth the 200 bucks price at Appple store?

What can it do for me that i can't do with Reaper and Garageband?
Garageband has severe restrictions built in to it. They want to stop you in your tracks as soon as you get started and need to purchase Logic Pro. Stay far away from this time waster.

Logic Pro is pretty awful IMHO. Difficult, time consuming and very unintuitive. Reaper blows it out of the water in every way (including and especially in stability).

Mainstage is a resource hog and doesn't do anything that Reaper can't. I use Reaper for live music mixing (full band production) and also for a performance rig (virtual this and that on top of mixing). Mainstage was one of the first ones I tried and the first one that didn't make the cut - by a mile. The only thing worse that I've ever tried is Ableton Crash.

Put your workflow together in Reaper and you will be way ahead of the crowd. Reaper will offer potentially higher quality sound (depends on your sources and mixing of course) as well since Logic and Mainstage are still 32bit fp mix engines vs. 64bit fp in Reaper.

Last edited by serr; 03-13-2013 at 02:19 PM.
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Old 03-13-2013, 03:14 PM   #6
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Garageband has severe restrictions built in to it. They want to stop you in your tracks as soon as you get started and need to purchase Logic Pro
Nonsense. It's a different tool for a different purpose. Someone who uses GarageBand for their work uses it happily and doesn't need Logic or Reaper.

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Logic Pro is pretty awful IMHO. Difficult, time consuming and very unintuitive.
Nonsense. Not at all if you know how to use it, same as Reaper : ) There are many reasons not to use the programs named but those aren't them.
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Old 03-14-2013, 03:35 AM   #7
OlafHaraldson
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I used Logic for a long time but, as someone who uses a lot of very RAM heavy sampled instruments, I eventually got fed up with large projects incessantly crashing, spontaneously reloading all of my samples, and a number of other crippling bugs that I imagine have roots deep in the legacy code. After years of frustration and ridiculous workarounds, I jumped ship and found REAPER. It handles the vast majority of tasks as well as Logic, and there are number of things I find even better suited to my workflow, especially after a little tweaking. Best of all, it's stable.

As others have said, Logic does have some nice built-in plugins - more so than just about every other DAW. If you don't have a collection of 3rd-party software instruments and effects, Logic could be very appealing. For $200, you'd be hard-pressed to find as respectable an assortment of plugins elsewhere, and Logic itself isn't a terrible interface to work with. It's stubborn at times, but of the major DAWs, I've always found it to be the simplest - with deeper layers of complexity for those interested in exploring it.

Oh, and the 32-bit/64-bit architecture has no effect on sound quality. Instead, it primarily impacts how much memory the program can utilize at a given time. Within 32-bit programs, there's a hard limit of 4GB. 64-bit programs cap off at 16.8 million terabytes - far, far more than any musician should have access to in today's world. It is often confused with the bit-depth of digital audio, which can make a significant difference in sound quality - though, unless you're processing the ever-living hell out of it, anything above 24-bit might be a bit superfluous.

That said, Logic 9 has been 64-bit for some time.

There's a helpful community over at the Logic Pro Help forums. Some of the folks there know the software inside and out, and can help you with anything Logic-related that's on your mind.

http://www.logicprohelp.com/forum/

Keep in mind, though, that REAPER is just as capable a DAW and certainly not something to be dismissed. It's all just a matter of finding the program that agrees with your way of thinking.
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Old 03-14-2013, 11:39 AM   #8
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I was referring to the mix engine (ie. 32 bit floating point vs. 64 bit floating point audio paths), not the app. Confusing yes, as it happens to coincidentally be the same numbers for very different subjects.

I got very familiar with Logic when it was called Logic Audio Platinum and still owned by eMagic. First DAW I ever used in fact. And a nightmare from hell at that time! The reason I still refer to it as Logic Audio Hell. Apple fixed the major bugs but it's still Logic Audio Hell at heart. Started using Protools and really liked it. Got lots done quickly. Very intuitive.
Tried Logic Hell 9 a while back and still thought it was still ridiculously bad. Stubbornly unintuitive. So now Protools gets killed by corporate shenanigans and now I turn to Reaper. Super intuitive. Just clicked.

Yeah Logic's stock plugins are better than some other Daw's stock plugins...
Which is a pretty moot point since most folks use whatever plugins they want regardless of who made them. Basically the whole point of the DAW system - using modular plugins written by anyone in any DAW. So no one is stopping you from using stock Logic plugins in Reaper if you like them.

Hence my recommendation to avoid Logic even if you were to get it for free since we have Reaper here which far exceeds it. To anyone just starting out, start with Reaper.
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Old 03-14-2013, 03:14 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by serr View Post
I was referring to the mix engine (ie. 32 bit floating point vs. 64 bit floating point audio paths), not the app. Confusing yes, as it happens to coincidentally be the same numbers for very different subjects.
Huh. I was actually completely ignorant of mix engine bit-depth. The more you know.
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Old 03-15-2013, 04:28 PM   #10
kristen
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Thanks. I might get logic in the future but Reaper and garageband seem good enough for me right now. Simple songwriting and recording,

But I can tell you that i do not care for the music editing in garageband.
And the fact that you can import and edit midi in garageband, but you cannot export midi is like very stupid to the 10th degree.

I don't use mainstage, but the 30 dollar price includes ALL of the garageband loops.
Several gigs of downloads! I bought it for the loops.
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