Best DAW for Mac

[Sascha Franck]

I don't like Logic Pro's virtual instruments. Their horn sections sound like a harmonica, out of the box. Not worth the tuning effort in my book.

Maybe you just don't know how to handle them. And fwiw, before you feel offended: I don't know, either. But a mate of mine sure does:



As so often, it's not the tools to be blamed.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

One overhyped aspect of Logic Pro is the virtual instrument library. Can you live without it?

Maybe as far as the horns and strings go, they do suck a bit compared to 3rd party stuff.

Logic also has Alchemy and a whole bunch of different synths (that still hold up quite well), every classic drum machine, drum kit designer (which while not on par with Toontrack etc, is still better than most stock drum plugins). It also has a useable Mellotron.

For the most part I don’t think the included Logic stuff is BETTER than the competition, but more often than not it’s as good as a lot of stuff out there and it’s not something you have to spend more on. I think it’s more that you have a good starting off point and you can supplement them with things you care most about.

 

[LeftyLoungeLizard]

 

[Sascha Franck]

drum kit designer (which while not on par with Toontrack etc

I think it holds up very well against Toontrack once used along with Drummer. Sure, Drummer isn't as versatile as some folks may like it (for instance: don't even try to have it play modern metal), but in general it's as amazing as it gets.

IMO, a lot of synths and FX hold up pretty well against a lot more expensive 3rd party plugins. In fact, there's really only just a handful of the internal plugins not doing too well, such as Guitar Amp Designer (some of the Tweed models sound pretty decent, though). And some others are just great. Also, let's not forget that some of them profit immensely from being tightly integrated (see Drummer), so you can for instance drag audio regions straight onto tracks, onto synths and what not to create sampler tracks (with the region length information staying intact).
Apart from that very handful of things mentioned, in case you can't get absolutely professional recordings, arrangements and mixes out of Logic, it's most defenitely not the fault of the included plugins.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I think it holds up very well against Toontrack once used along with Drummer. Sure, Drummer isn't as versatile as some folks may like it (for instance: don't even try to have it play modern metal), but in general it's as amazing as it gets.

IMO, a lot of synths and FX hold up pretty well against a lot more expensive 3rd party plugins. In fact, there's really only just a handful of the internal plugins not doing too well, such as Guitar Amp Designer (some of the Tweed models sound pretty decent, though). And some others are just great. Also, let's not forget that some of them profit immensely from being tightly integrated (see Drummer), so you can for instance drag audio regions straight onto tracks, onto synths and what not to create sampler tracks (with the region length information staying intact).
Apart from that very handful of things mentioned, in case you can't get absolutely professional recordings, arrangements and mixes out of Logic, it's most defenitely not the fault of the included plugins.

Couldn't really disagree more tbh. Drummer is fine but Toontrack is in another stratosphere. The drum sounds themselves are done quite well with Drummer, the drum choices/tuning/tones/micing are good. That should be expected though and largely isn't what separates your average Kontakt library to something like Superior. The handling of MIDI in Drummer isn't all that, its almost a requirement to conert the track to MIDI (which lets face it, it IS a MIDI track all along) because you can't get things written close enough without getting stuck in. And the step editor in Logic isn't really as good as the dedicated (cubase style) grid editors like Superior has built in. Toontracks MIDI search to find and MIDI libraries are much more powerful than what Drummer can do, which I'd say is good for quick demos but quite restrictive for anything precise.

Logic's Pultec/1073/1176's etc are just fine, but again, 3rd party companies are doing way more thorough and complex modelling. They're good enough to do the job but they're not setting the pace in any way at all.

I would say that Logic's audio editing is a serious drawback compared to other DAW's and does actually make it hard to make the most pristine recordings possible. You can just about fudge the editing together but its unpredictable and not accurate enough to depend on for very serious audio editing work. Logic's handling of playlists/take folders/VCA's/groups has also become extremely messy and can make features that SHOULD make work simple more complicated than it needs to be. I could do the work I needed to do in Logic, but it was cumbersome, longwinded, unpredictable and significantly worse than me just switching to Pro Tools, where I've been ever since.

Logic clearly has a lot going for it, and it absolutely gets used by a number of professionals. But despite what loyal followers of any other DAW say, there is a reason why Pro Tools is the no.1 choice for most audio professionals.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I know about all these. And yes, step edit is incredibly poor - and actually several steps back compared to the old version of it, namely Hyper Edit.
I also agree on the audio edit portion. That's just poor. 1998 style.
And still, once you know how to deal with things, you can basically get pretty much everything done, even quite efficiently.

 

[jazzarian]

Maybe you just don't know how to handle them. And fwiw, before you feel offended: I don't know, either. But a mate of mine sure does:



As so often, it's not the tools to be blamed.

Yeah, spend hours looking a videos showing you how to make them sound more realistic.

Perhaps you have time for such endeavors. I do not.

Seriously, the horns and strings are a joke, and the drums are simply dull.

I do not have such issues with Native Instruments and ToonTrack. They make their patches sound good out of the box.

 

[jazzarian]

Couldn't really disagree more tbh. Drummer is fine but Toontrack is in another stratosphere. The drum sounds themselves are done quite well with Drummer, the drum choices/tuning/tones/micing are good. That should be expected though and largely isn't what separates your average Kontakt library to something like Superior. The handling of MIDI in Drummer isn't all that, its almost a requirement to conert the track to MIDI (which lets face it, it IS a MIDI track all along) because you can't get things written close enough without getting stuck in. And the step editor in Logic isn't really as good as the dedicated (cubase style) grid editors like Superior has built in. Toontracks MIDI search to find and MIDI libraries are much more powerful than what Drummer can do, which I'd say is good for quick demos but quite restrictive for anything precise.

Logic's Pultec/1073/1176's etc are just fine, but again, 3rd party companies are doing way more thorough and complex modelling. They're good enough to do the job but they're not setting the pace in any way at all.

I would say that Logic's audio editing is a serious drawback compared to other DAW's and does actually make it hard to make the most pristine recordings possible. You can just about fudge the editing together but its unpredictable and not accurate enough to depend on for very serious audio editing work. Logic's handling of playlists/take folders/VCA's/groups has also become extremely messy and can make features that SHOULD make work simple more complicated than it needs to be. I could do the work I needed to do in Logic, but it was cumbersome, longwinded, unpredictable and significantly worse than me just switching to Pro Tools, where I've been ever since.

Logic clearly has a lot going for it, and it absolutely gets used by a number of professionals. But despite what loyal followers of any other DAW say, there is a reason why Pro Tools is the no.1 choice for most audio professionals.

BTW, I preferred EZD3 drums to any of the drum kit patches in NI Kontakt 7. I am very impressed to say the least with Toontrack. I'll upgrade to Pro Drummer (x) after I migrate to some new M4 hardware.

I bought a bunch of ToonTrack stuff recently, the Session Organ, Classic Electric (pianos), Wave (something) and a bunch of their midi files. Do it yourself songs in minutes. Crazy good.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Seriously, the horns and strings are a joke

The horns of the example posted are a joke? Ok, feel free to come up with something better. 3,2,1 - go! We're waiting.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Fwiw, talking about Logic, the V11 update is a joke. Big time dissapointed.

 

[jazzarian]

The horns of the example posted are a joke? Ok, feel free to come up with something better. 3,2,1 - go! We're waiting.

Sorry dude, you are free to check out "Session Horns" and "Session Horns Pro" on the Toontrack website. I can't twist your...er, appendage. Logic Pro isn't in the ballpark, or even the same city as the ball park.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Sorry dude, you are free to check out "Session Horns" and "Session Horns Pro" on the Toontrack website.

No, I want to hear something you did, taking less effort than what the Logic Horns required. Because these are your claims. I don't care about something on the vendors website because there's experts doing these demos all day long.

And fwiw, you're sooo much of an expert you don't even know that "Session Horns" or "Session Horns Pro" aren't even Toontrack libraries. Congrats!

 

[Sascha Franck]

And on another sidenote: I actually happen to own the Session Horns Pro library (just not the non-existing version from Toontrack but the real version from Native Instruments, go figure). They're quite decent but in case you know what you're doing, the Logic Horns are quite more up to date, Session Horns Pro is quite dated.
Still, feel free to come up with a sound example matching what my mate did in the example above.