What is going on? Come on Apple... no FireWire in the MacBook? what the frak? How am I supposed to connect my gorgeous Apogee Duet (or any other FireWire audio interface for that matter)?
If you want to use Logic Studio with your new MacBook be prepared to use a USB audio interface because the boys at Cupertino have dropped the FireWire port from the new lineup.
If you use a FireWire audio interface and have an older MacBook, you might as well stick to it.
Of course the MacBook Pro has a FireWire port but come on... let someone who knows about it more than I do explain it in a very elegant post.
The main objective of a company is to MAKE MONEY and well, if you and I are not satisfied with the specs the majority of the population will.
Let's face it; not everybody is concerned about making music with their laptops and probably what Apple means is: "if you are a musician why do you have a MacBook, you should have a MacBook Pro and shut up already".
Of course everyone would love to have one but musicians usually have tiny tiny pockets.
If you've never heard of Stereolab it's basically a Franco-British band (mostly a British bloke and a French Lass with different lineups through time) that sounds as though they could have scored the entire 1960-1970s film era movements, from Italian Neorealism to the Nouvelle Vague up to New Hollywood...
As a hyperbolic plus: to my wild imagination they sound more Parisian than most Parisian bands =) have a listen:
Coldplay is one of the hottest bands out there and Apple has recently posted an interview with music producer Markus Dravsm, he talks about the role LS plays in their current setup and how they work with it, how it helps their work flow and creative process.
Well, German magazine Xound has an interview with the acclaimed producer (in German) but here's the Google translation to English (which in my opinion is not that awkward).
Here's the golden bit:
Das Herzstück des Alchimisten ist ein Apple, da ich alter Logic-Fan bin – ich kenne Gerhard Lengeling* schon seit er noch für den Commodore C 64 programmiert hat – aber man kann genauso einen PC verwenden. Ich habe von Logic 7 auf Version 8 geupdated. Ohne Logic 8 hätte das Album sechs Monate länger gedauert.
Which roughly translates to:
"The heart of the alchemists is an Apple, because I'm an Apple fan - I know Gerhard Lengeling since the time he was programming for the Commodore C 64 - Otherwise you can just use a PC. I had Logic 7 updated to version 8. Without Logic 8 the album would have taken 6 months longer."
When I read about people complaining about why they can't do anything with their current DAW I love to see people who complete major projects with the same software; it brings back the fact that the human factor is THE factor to consider in the equation.
* Lengeling is one of the founding members of Emagic, the company that gave us Logic.
Eddie Kramer, the legendary recording engineer is on tour with Waves and Logic studio in North America.
Who is Eddie Kramer? Someone who understands that audio is an art form, someone who worked with Jimmie Hendrix, Peter Frampton... Led Zeppelin... Erick Clapton... If you read his complete production credits you will get a heart attack.
I knew about Eddie in the best of ways: listening to a recording, not knowing who it was and asking "WHO IS THAT, WOW!!!" For the first time I was not asking about the artist but the audio engineer.
I was a very young lad learning to play the guitar (which I never did properly) and it was this song:
It totally blew my mind. If you love music I'm sure this has happened to you at least once in your life; you hear a song or recording and you begin to wonder how... how did they record such a pristine yet powerful sound, how did they blend the instruments together in a perfect mix, what kind of technical prowess, witchcraft, alchemy, or science was it necessary to achieve such work of art?
Eddie Kramer is one of the greatest (if not the greatest) recording engineers in history. Yet he is humble enough to share his great knowledge with the newer generations, he is not someone to keep his recipes secret.
In the past every time I read about Eddie in articles in magazines such as Keyboard or Sound on Sound he was always addressing a group of students or giving a recording masterclass and blasting MP3 and expressing his dissatisfaction with some aspects of digital sound.
Contrary to what you may believe he's not an enemy of digital sound he's just not been a great fan of it. He is rather an advocate of using what you have and mixing analog with digital.
Here's a great video from 1996, where he talks about digital vs. analog, further on another video where he reacts to Waves plugin technology.
On a recent video E. Kramer seems satisfied the way things are going for DAWs, specifically in this case, Waves plugins, watch:
If a man who has been on this business since Woodstock mixed Jimmy Hendrix and The Beatles says he knows analog sound you might as well damn believe him.
Congratulations Waves and thank you for choosing Logic Studio as your running mate. I mean, come on, for some reason you chose Logic Studio and not someone else right? (growing market share of Macs and Logic Studio maybe?).
Perhaps someone has brought some good marketing sense to your scary company. Now if you did the same with your pricing strategy you'd be golden. Yes, your plugins are sexy technological wonders but with the price of some of your bundles I could buy 2 Mac Pros.
You really don't want to go the Avid way now do you? I mean ignoring that for every established recording studio you target there are a 1,000 more home recordists with tiny pockets. Unless of course that story of studios closing is old news and the trend has reversed...
Affordable prices for great software is nothing bad.
I mean it congrats Apple and Waves for getting Eddie Kramer, a great man, one of the greatest analog audio engineers in the whole wide world and perhaps the most notorious digital audio skeptic to promote you.
