Logic Pro - thoughts (and how does it compare to Cubase)

[mdlewis]

I use Logic Pro as my DAW of choice in my home studio. I have found it to be amazingly feature rich at fairly low cost. Some aspects require a learning curve as they are different than software that uses traditional recording mediums as an interactive model (e.g., a tape analogy). Here are some of the interesting features beyond recording live audio -

• Logic Pro tracks can be configured to contain audio data, midi data, loops, and software engines (e.g, software instrumentalists). This means as a composition aid it's awesome - you can lay down some bass licks and then try it out with various rhythmic accompaniments or vice versa exceedingly quickly. You can edit these tracks in a surprisingly rich variety of ways. Songwriting is really fun in this environment.
• The analysis tools that come with it are very useful - one of my favorite things to do when learning a cover is to throw the basic trax into Logic, do a rhythmic analysis, create a software drummer that follows the rhythmic analysis, turn off the basic trax, and then play to that. It really forces me to recall what makes the song the song and be creative about what I play. I also use the analysis tools to look in detail at all my basses to see how my playing, picking style, bass settings, pickup settings are all influencing the actual recorded frequencies. I've debugged quite a bit of my own anecdotal bs this way.
• It works quite well with video editing. It's a very easy way to add sound effects and music to a video.
• Importing and exporting is a cinch - it's got tools to send and receive stuff from almost anyone/anything! This his helpful when you're working remote on collaborative projects.

That being said, I'm an experienced Mac/Unix user. I use Macs and Linux machines for the simple reason that in my environment, the costs are much lower than PC's running Windows. For some people this is a religious issue, but for me this decision was made based on my personal total-cost-of-ownership (especially including maintenance) data. YMMV as they say. The main reason I mention this some knowledge of the basic operation of the operating system is quite helpful to understand for example, where files are stored, on what devices you need to place your temp caches (fast storage etc.). Also, the new OS has a fairly tight security system that sometimes needs to be circumvented when installing third party drivers. This is not obvious. There's a lot of good discussions on line though, as professional Logic Pro usage has increased quite significantly as of late. Also, newer Macs use proprietary silicon and thunderbolt/usb-c ports to connect to ADACs. Make sure that your favorite audio interface has compatible drivers.