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Logic Pro or GarageBand
- Thread starter Cayden
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If all you need to do is record a handful of audio streams, I can't say there is a big advantage to doing that in Logic. Garageband is very capable of handling that kind of project and even includes powerful tools like flex editing to fix imperfections in your audio recording.
For many years, I used Garageband for that purpose and I was very happy with what the free program was capable of.
Last year, I decided to switch to Logic because I wanted to explore writing music using the incredible variety of effects, software instruments and sound generators available in Logic. For better or worse, Logic opens up a huge new universe of possibliities. It's pretty much limitless.
I'm really enjoying it, but there are some downsides to consider. For a hobbyist like me, I used to be able to write and record a song in a matter of weeks. I'd write it, practice my guitar parts and then record it. Done. Now, with all the options available in Logic, I spend months playing with different sounds and effects before I'm satisfied. I can go weeks not even touching my guitar—instead spending my evenings just clicking my mouse searching for the right instrument sounds, editing software notes in the piano role editor or turning software dials to explore different delay styles.
So that's how Logic has changed my music creation process. It's the direction I wanted to go in so I'm extremely happy with what Logic can do. It's incredible what you get for the price.
All that said, if your recording requirements don't go beyond capturing audio streams, Garageband provides a great, streamlined interface to do that.
For many years, I used Garageband for that purpose and I was very happy with what the free program was capable of.
Last year, I decided to switch to Logic because I wanted to explore writing music using the incredible variety of effects, software instruments and sound generators available in Logic. For better or worse, Logic opens up a huge new universe of possibliities. It's pretty much limitless.
I'm really enjoying it, but there are some downsides to consider. For a hobbyist like me, I used to be able to write and record a song in a matter of weeks. I'd write it, practice my guitar parts and then record it. Done. Now, with all the options available in Logic, I spend months playing with different sounds and effects before I'm satisfied. I can go weeks not even touching my guitar—instead spending my evenings just clicking my mouse searching for the right instrument sounds, editing software notes in the piano role editor or turning software dials to explore different delay styles.
So that's how Logic has changed my music creation process. It's the direction I wanted to go in so I'm extremely happy with what Logic can do. It's incredible what you get for the price.
All that said, if your recording requirements don't go beyond capturing audio streams, Garageband provides a great, streamlined interface to do that.
Thank you for the great response. Right now we do most of the equalizing on an external mixer, and play everything live, so it seems like GarageBand will be fine for our uses now
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Will it make the overall sound better? I don't plan on using samples, midi, or any other large software features. Just raw audio lines that need to be imported from live instruments. The only thing I don't like about GarageBand is the export quality is always different than in GarageBand
That's a good point.
Isn't the recording and export quality rather low in GB? Like 16/41 or something?
I don't know the exact quality, but no matter what the sound levels are at I always have to spend hours getting the export to be a decent volume without distortion, I wonder if Logic does this as well
Try Audacity. It's a free audio recording editing app that has a Normalize editing function. I don't use GB but I would think it would have a Normalize funtion when exporting a file to get the over-all audio level up to a pre-distortion level. Normalize only boosts the whole file as loud as the loudest part of a track. If you have a track or parts of a track that are a lot louder than other parts then the quieter parts might be too soft. In that case you might want to use some track compression which evens out the dynamics. Over compressing isn't disirerable though because you lose musical dynamics. I haven't messed with the compression edit funtion in Audacity but I imagine you would need to import individual tracks from GB and then mix them down, if that is possible.