Music made with Logic Studio - Feature yourself!

2011 December - Edit.

You can show us your songs on SOUNDCLOUD.

Please go to this address:

The "Made With Logic Studio" group.

http://soundcloud.com/groups/made-with-logic-studio

Tight budget Logic Studio on a Mac Mini

Trying to build a bare, bare-bones home studio with the most affordable Mac?
You probably already own a monitor, a mouse, a keyboard... ever heard of the Mac mini?

Yes, Logic Studio works on a Mac Mini, as well as it works on an Macbook Intel 13-in.

What about the audio interface?

Very well, see that FireWire port? you can get a nice, bus-powered FireWire interface with enough ins and outs to cover your needs...
...provided that you are not going to record each performer of the Radio Berlin Orchestra and instead you just want to record your guitar or keyboard playing or your voice or what have you.

There are dozens of audio interfaces out there ranging from -100 US dollars to +1000 and beyond... but as I said if you are going to record into a few inputs at a time I've prepared a list of my personal favorites (sorry if yours is not there) - by the way I use an almost-decade-old MOTU 828 (not even the MkII, let alone the MK3!) and it has never let me down, so yes, FireWire works.

Here are the criteria for the list:

1. Price range: 200 to 350 USD.
2 Power: Has to be bus-powered (the FireWire bus powers the interface)
3. It must have:
a) Preamps for your unpowered instruments (like a guitar)
b) Phantom Power spec for your condenser microphones that need it
c) At least 2 instrument inputs for your synths or samplers or drum machines or effects...
d) MIDI I/O for your older MIDI instruments (the newer ones usually connect to the computer via USB)
4. It must record at minimum 24bit/96KHz

That said, that price range and with those specs my personal favorites so far are:

1. Yamaha GO46
2. PreSonus Firebox 6x8
3. M-Audio Firewire 410
4. Edirol FA-66
and here's a comparison sheet with their specs (click on it)

And this is how your budget would go:
(In US Dollars)

1 Mac mini 2 GHz @ 799 $ +
1 copy of Logic Studio @ 499 $ +
1 Yamaha GO46 @ 340 $ = 1,638 $

What? still too expensive? ok, let's change the Mac mini and the audio interface:

1 Mac mini 1.83 GHz @ 599 $ +
1 copy of Logic Studio @ 499 $ +
1 Edirol FA-66 @ 279 $ = 1,377 $
You know you could even reduce it to 1,077 $ if you took a copy of Logic Express which in my opinion is a lot better and feature-packed -if you compare the specs- than all the 'lite' versions out there.

Update - August 3rd
Fellow twitter Alex Hoffman had told me to include the Presonus Firepod - he says it's great, I didn't see his message earlier so I apologize!

Steinberg drops prices, DAW comparison

Apple sure knows how to shake things up in any industry they would decide to enter...
Even if they were not the first to do something they end up having the rest of the companies following every Apple move and ending up playing catch and "me too".

It's as if companies were having a comfy rest in their hammocks (comfy rest as in forgetting to innovate) and suddenly, Apple sneaks up from behind with a megaphone and yells WAKE UP BIATCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a list of examples...

Mobile phone industry:

The iPhone has everyone rethinking their models and their software strategy, Nokia giving away their secret sauce in hopes of having developers make applications for their hardware.
Google et. al. developing Android... does this have anything to do with a certain App Store?

Music and TV shows distribution industry:

iTunes... in the US they now sell more music than Wal Mart need I say more? as the French say: Même pas la peine...

Movie rental industry:

Eh... that one's just taking off but you know what's going to happen.

Film/TV editing and post production:

As we've seen it, Apple's been eating Avid's lunch non-stop with Final Cut Pro, heck, Avid even abandoned the National Broadcasters Association convention in Las Vegas this spring, saying it's too expensive and they need more alone time to rethink their marketing strategy... now Avid's thinking perhaps their solutions might be a tinny bit overpriced and poorly targeted.

Laptops:

Been selling like hot cakes, come on you've read the news.

Ok I'm bored citing the other industries let's go to our niche: music production and post production.

Well, now at Steinberg they're slicing prices and they're not alone, and I'm sure it's a consequence of what Apple did to this industry which is... irreversible damage, or what I would call the "Final Cut Studio trick" and it goes like this:

1. Take all of your applications for music and audio editing and sell them in a single package
2. Stop dreaming that you can make money by selling them separately
3. Remember you're mostly targeting music producers (i.e. musicians) who have tiny, tiny pockets
4. Watch your market share grow...

Since Logic Studio came out, Cakewalk is the only company that has bunddled up software in a whole package. The other companies are maybe, just shy (I really do not think they are greedy) and don't want to cut prices that fast and bundle say, a Wavelab with a Cubase and sell both for the price of one... but that shall eventually happen.

Let's compare what's out there up to this date shall we?
We'll sum it up with a table, please comment if you see any mistakes on the table and I will update/correct them.

Click on the image below