The Mac and the DAW

Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:10 pm

Hello RO,
Those of us who use Mac, would you please state what DAW you use and/or what DAW you see as interesting and exciting on the horizon. I just would like to see what everyone likes for their Mac.

Thanks for your time.

I use Logic Pro 8

I see Cubase 5 as interesting.

Edit: I'm sure when Snow Leopard arrives this is going to open up our DAW's for much more ram and raw power.

Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:26 pm

I'm still running an old Digi 001 and ProTools LE (not state-of-the-art, but still gets the job donel)

I'm hoping to upgrade mac, interface, and PT as soon as I've got a good room to put it in.

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:08 pm

Logic8 on a Mini, never had any luck with Steinberg products since the OSX transition, so I don't care anymore.

I also own and use Digital Performer, and Live, but logic is my workhorse.

Thumbs Up

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:21 pm

Logic Express. I am assuming that by up and coming you are referring to the new PreSonus Studio 1? That looks very promising as well.

Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:14 am

Logic 8. for me there's nothing better.

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:06 pm

Pro Tools 8 doesn't not suck. There, I said it.

I'll second (third?) Logic Pro 8. You may (or may not) have heard people complaining about how difficult it is to use. Let's just say it's different. Takes a little getting used to, especially if you're coming from something as easy to use as Pro Tools. I still don't like the audio editing features of Logic (especially compared to PT). Of course, you can do things in Logic that you cannot in Pro Tools (and may not want to, for that matter!). It's all about how much you can tweak and customize everything.

Cubase has never quite done it for me on a Mac, though I like the design of the program, and have done some composition projects with it (Cubase 3). I have yet to try Cubase 5.

Digital Performer is another one that I've used/taught for years. Probably a bit easier to use than Logic. Very cool how you can have multiple projects nested within one, all sharing the same instruments. I used it recently for post on film project, where we had different reels broken out into separate chunks, all housed within one DP project. Very convenient--you could do an entire album that way. Backup often!

And lastly, Ableton. I have (as I've said in another post) a soft stop for this program. If you compose music (acoustic or electronic), you should take a look at it. Even if you just rough out ideas and then move to a "bigger" DAW for tracking. It is the most creatively inspiring piece of software I've ever used. Though, it did take me a while to really get my head around how I was going to use some of Ableton's features. It's easy to understand how the program works, but applying it practically to your workflow may take a bit of thought. It's worth it. A while back, I actually wrote a short paper/tutorial on the nonlinear composition features of Ableton vs Cubase. Ableton vs. Cubase for Nonlinear Composition

Dan

Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 3:03 am

TheOnlineAudioSchool wrote:

I'll second (third?) Logic Pro 8. You may (or may not) have heard people complaining about how difficult it is to use. Let's just say it's different.

i never thought of logic as being difficult to use. it may be because it is the first real daw i've worked with, but to me it is completely logical. Wink

especially since version 8.

before switching to mac i have tried almost every other daw, but wasn't satisfied with the workflow. so i decided to get a mac just to be able to use a newer version of logic (version 5.5 was the last one for windows pc) and never regretted it.

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