I've never used Cubase - all my pro musician and producer friends chose Logic so I did too, so I could turn to them for advice!

A few random thoughts on Logic: it's great for MIDI sequencing and editing. It has a timing resolution of 960 clicks per quarter note, which at 120 bpm equates to just over half a millisecond - fast enough to preserve the tiny timing nuances of real life playing. When it comes to editing, the matrix editor and note event list are both easy to use and useful in different ways.

The score editor is not perfect but if you persevere you can get decent results out of it - however it's sometimes a bit of a battle because the scoring software is very MIDI-conscious and doesn't always co-operate with attempts to reposition symbols. There are also a few bugs which are unlikely to get ironed out because so few people use the score editor in the first place and Sibelius has taken over.

Logic started life as a sequencer many years ago and this is arguably its strength: it's had plenty of time to develop into a mature sequencing program. It also handles audio reasonably well, though it sometimes appears to me to be a little over-volatile - it's easy to accidentally move things out of position or even delete them without intending to. You have to be careful, but you can at least avoid the first hazard by locking the MIDI and audio data to time code once you're happy with it.

The instruments and effect plug-ins that are bundled with Logic are all of a decent standard, the Space Designer reverb is high quality and the EXS sampler is simple but powerful, easy to program once you figure out its editor.

Logic isn't perfect (no software is) - it crashes occasionally for no reason, but it's stable most of the time. It does all the things one could reasonably expect it to and a lot more besides. I must confess I don't use it to run Vienna Instruments - I have these on a PC using Forte as a VST Host, but I do all my sequencing and recording with Logic and nothing terrible has happened yet.

One downside to Logic - the so-called 'environment' page. It baffles most beginners and I don't think its design or nomenclature are very helpful.

Hi there,

I would agree with Conquer above, but would add that I do use VI and in general have had little reason to complain - The score issues can be over come and using tricks you learn along the way such as putting a rest into a note such as a semi-breve or dotted crochet to create a tie within a bar and zooming close to check the actual position of a dynamic or slur - when zoomed out too far you don't get the exact position that will be printed. I've used Logic since the days it was Notator on the Atari back in the early 90's. It's also more and more becoming the standard in LA, or so I've been led to believe.

As for VI, I've had a few problems which I think may be unique to my set-up which has never really worked smoothly since I got it back in 2005 (long before I could afford VSL stuff). I run Logic Pro 7.1.1 Dual G5 2.5 with 8G RAM and the problems I've had are listed in a post I put up just a few minutes ago - VI instances/Core Audio Overload. That said, once I've converted my lines into audio and then mix from there I've found it very easy to work in and even editing audio is a snip - I have Pro Tools LE too and am using it less and less for editing audio - sacrilege to many I know.

Hope this helps.

Nick

Digital Orchestrator Pro. Ha-ha! That will raise some eyebrows...

If we're talking about what lots of people use (not always the best guide I know), in London the standard pro sequencers are Logic and Pro Tools. I have no hands-on experience with Pro Tools' sequencer but have worked with programmers who use it - it seems to be able to do all the MIDI editing tasks I do in Logic, though it's nowhere near such a mature sequencer.

I don't know of any professional musician or programmer who uses Cubase, though I have met a few semi-pro musos who bought it because it was cheaper than Logic.

People tend to praise the system they know and very few will have had the time to properly compare the leading makes. It's a good idea to listen out for the horror stories, because where's there's smoke there's usually fire!

@Conquer said:

I don't know of any professional musician or programmer who uses Cubase, though I have met a few semi-pro musos who bought it because it was cheaper than Logic.

2 well known advocates of Cubase are Herr Zimmer & Mr Gregson-Williams. Whether that's still current, I don't know - but they must have the patience of saints to put up with the bug fest that was SX and is now Cubase 4.

@Conquer said:

If we're talking about what lots of people use (not always the best guide I know), in London the standard pro sequencers are Logic and Pro Tools. I have no hands-on experience with Pro Tools' sequencer but have worked with programmers who use it - it seems to be able to do all the MIDI editing tasks I do in Logic, though it's nowhere near such a mature sequencer.

I know many professionals who use Cubase, particularly film composers, as, until recently, Logic did not have some very important features. I believe that it has now just about caught up to Cubase, although the audio handling leaves a bit to be desired IMO. However, the biggest drawback is that it is Mac only. Never good to put all your eggs in one basket, particularly in the light of Apple's delight in breaking applications each time they do a minor update to the OS. However, at least the Intel Macs are as fast as PCs.

PT is improving as sequencer, but for me it is still unusable. Maybe that will all change once Sibelius becomes properly integrated, but the other snag is that everything has to be recorded in real time; no fast mixdown/bounce. This is a huge drawback to me.

DG

Hi DG - what are these very important features that Logic used to lack?

@Conquer said:

Hi DG - what are these very important features that Logic used to lack?

Two of them were Tempo Process (in Cubase VST this was called Hitpoint mirror, I think) and proper audio panning. Those silly panpots really didn't cut it.

DG

Oh, I thought Logic always had a half-decent virtual pan pot built into each audio object? (Positioned right above the virtual fader?) Tempo process sounds fun (never used it), but I have found that Logic's time signature list is very buggy - it's much more reliable to open the two little transport buttons (one of which shows tempo and time signature) and make the changes there.

@Conquer said:

Oh, I thought Logic always had a half-decent virtual pan pot built into each audio object? (Positioned right above the virtual fader?) Tempo process sounds fun (never used it), but I have found that Logic's time signature list is very buggy - it's much more reliable to open the two little transport buttons (one of which shows tempo and time signature) and make the changes there.

Well, it's all water under the bridge now, but the panpot was exactly that. You couldn't narrow the stereo width; only raise and lower one side of the stereo sample.

Tempo Process is great for creating master tracks for film. It is also very good when you need to write 30s and 60s for library tracks. You can do all the rits and accels until they sound good, and then compress or expand the whole shebang to fit the correct length (or even only part of it), The funny thing is that this feature was removed from Cubase when they brought out SX and only re-instated in the latter part of version 2, and only then because so many people complained, including HZ.

The lack of Time Sig/Tempo list is another thing that I miss from Cubase VST, but as always there are other ways around doing the same thing.

DG

Logic is still buggy when it comes to the tempo list and using SMPTE offset. It's not impossible to workaround, but it drives you up the wall until you work out what it's doing. Much though I love Logic, that bug has brought me close to cross grading to either Nuendo or DP a couple of times. Fingers crossed for (the mythical) Logic 8....