In the past I’ve worked with Ableton Live, Audacity, Cubase, GarageBand, Logic Pro X, Nuendo, Pro Tools, Reaper, and Reason. I’m probably forgetting some programs from a long time ago that are no longer in business. I think that every DAW (digital audio workstation, for folks who don’t know) has pros and cons. I liked Cubase because it was easy to use, but fairly buggy on the Mac at the time when I used it. I liked Nuendo a lot. I never liked Pro Tools because it’s a pain in the ass on many levels, but you have to have it if you want to do work from other studios. Reason and Ableton are great for EDM. GarageBand is the easiest to use. Audacity is free. Reaper is cheap but not easy to use.
Eventually I settled on Logic Pro and have never looked back. And of everything I’ve used, Logic is hands down my favorite. Which in a way is unfortunate – lately I’ve been unhappy with Apple’s direction. When Steve Jobs died, something inside of Apple died with him. Common sense. Apple has become a phone company. I was an iOS developer for a while, until I got tired of every iOS update breaking my software and requiring me to make changes. iTunes started life as a great music app and has turned into a nightmare that everyone hates. My iPhone used to “just work,” but now it does things like change the podcast I’m listening to if I put my phone down too quickly. The free Logic Remote app stopped working on my old iPad 3 because Apple broke it with an update for no reason, other than to encourage me to buy a new iPad. They don’t make a low end computer with upgradable RAM any more. The new iPhone can’t be used with normal headphones. They did away with the magnetic locking power adaptor on some laptops, they… you get the point.
But then there’s Logic Pro X. And for $199, it’s almost everything I’d ever want and need in a DAW. Have you priced the industry standard Pro Tools? It’s $299. PER YEAR. And to do what Logic does, you’ll need to drop about another $800 – $1,000 on plugins and instruments. If you care about money, Logic Pro X on a Mac will still save you a crap ton compared to a Pro Tools-based PC rig that can do all the same things. Search for home studio tours on YouTube and you’ll see that 9 out fo 10 of the home studios you find are running Logic Pro X, because it’s super cost effective and it’s easy to use.
Instruments
Logic comes with a very good sampler and several very good synths. Out of the box, it’ll have pretty much any keyboard sound you could want. If if doesn’t, you can buy a plugin, but in all of the years I’ve used Logic I’ve only purchased one plugin instrument.
Audio Plugins
Logic ships with a good collection of reverbs, delays, choruses, eq, etc and so on. It even includes some simulated amps and pedals, though I prefer my own real tube amps. I have purchased two audio plugins – a vocal rider and a de-esser, both from waves.com. But you don’t really need any external plugins. In the past I’ve suggested that the vocal pitch plugin in Logic isn’t very good, but that’s not true. If you want highly controlled pitch correction, it’s in there – you just need to dig a little deeper.
Performance
On a Mac with an i5 processor and 8 GB of RAM I can still easily handle 75 tracks of audio without breaking a sweat.
Drummers
Logic includes several virtual drummers. They have their own different kits and their own different styles of playing. You can swap out the different kits – put Logan, the old school rock drummer, on a jazz kit! Great fun. There are many approaches to virtual drumming these days, but Logic’s is by far the easiest to use and understand. Best of all, at the end of the day, you can still use MIDI to tweak the drum performances. This is maybe my favorite part of Logic – the virtual drummers feel like real people, but they’re always on time.
Ease of Use
Logic Pro X borrowed a lot from GarageBand and as a result, it’s very easy to use, but also very powerful under the hood when you need it to be. Here’s something else – to get Pro Tools working on your Mac, you need a degree. Even the free limited version is a royal pain in the ass to get working. To get Logic working, you install it, and you’re done. It’s that easy.
Documentation
The documentation is not very good. At all. But that’s been an issue with Apple forever. The Mac has always been easy to use, as are most applications for it, but if you need help, turn to YouTube. To be fair, this also describes every other DAW out there. Apple should find the best YouTube content creator out there for Logic and just hire them to make videos.
Upgrade Path
Apple’s approach of including GarageBand on all Macs was and is genius and should be applauded. GarageBand is basically Logic Lite, and is good enough to handle what most people need. I used GarageBand on some of the tracks on my first album. You can open GarageBand projects in Logic, another brilliant move.
Summary
As long as Apple continues to support and improve Logic Pro X, I will continue to buy expensive Macs to run it on. It really is that good. And while it is possible to build your own Mac clone and save money, I wouldn’t. Eventually you’ll end up with support issues. People are willing to drop two grand on a guitar but they want to save money on their computer, THE most important piece of studio gear? I don’t get it. For under a grand you could get a used two year old Mac and Logic Pro X and have everything you need.
