what software?

[gonnabuyamac]

my wife and i are moving to nashville soon. my wife writes songs, and i mostly add music. up until now I've used garageband, which is decent. but, i want to go deeper and get more powerful software.

what do studios use? what's the best that's out there that doesn't cost you an arm and a leg?

 

[zimv20]

what do studios use?

does it matter?

the answer is Pro Tools, but "real" PT is going to set you back thousands. digidesign offers two other options (PT-M and PTLE) which are essentially the same, but don't run on the fancy hardware.

but again -- why does that matter?

imho, you should get the software which allows you to get work done. unless you'll be taking over work done in other studios, workflow should trump other concerns such as compatability.

you'll probably get a crapload of opinions about PT vs. Logic vs. Cubase vs. DP vs. Live vs. Audacity vs...., but you're the only one who can determine which of these programs (which all offer essentially the same features) works best for you.

....

nashville's not really a music/studio town*, but i reckon you can find one or two places that you can rent out for a couple hours and try their software, and even have an assistant engineer demo it. might save you some money in the long run on a bad purchase.

* that's a joke

 

[bbain]

"Not costing an arm and a leg" is a bit more problematic since the Intel macs. The ProTools LE/hardware bundles are probably the best bet. As near as I can tell, for example, Cubase 4 is the only Cubase that works on the Intel macs, and it's $400 or so upgrade. As a long time Cubase SE user on the PPC macs, not having any reasonable upgrade path due to a hardware change is irritating, to say the least. Likewise, Live 4 doesn't run well under Rosetta and Live 6 is $350 as an upgrade. The bundled S/W with a lot of the external interfaces, like EMu or Mackie, are often the PPC versions, not Universal Binaries or Intel versions.

 

[e-clipse]

Nashville is a city of Pro-Tools running on Macs. Pro-Tools is probably easier to use than the other software.

Keep the M-Audio Project Mix in mind. It is an audio interface with 8 pres built on a mixer with motorized faders.

 

[Staggerlee77]

Having tried out lots of different stuff, I generally recommend one of the cheaper versions of Pro Tools (M-Powered or LE) to people who are looking to upgrade, especially from GarageBand. The exception is for people who are doing purely electronic and MIDI based music - there I think Logic really has the upper hand. It'll be interesting to see what Apple does with Logic next though.

I think what studios use and what other musicians use is a legitimate consideration, especially these days. One of the cool things I've found about Pro Tools is that someone can write a song on their M-Powered rig at home, bring the session to my house and work on it on my 002/LE setup or take it to a big studio to track drums and stuff on an HD system, then take it home to work on it some more.

Most, if not all of the M-Audio interfaces come with a 2 week trial version of PT M-Powered.

You can also check out a 30-day demo of Logic Express here:

http://www.apple.com/logicexpress/trial/

 

[bbain]

FWIW, the Logic Express demo does NOT run on Intel Macs, according to Apple. It's pretty frustrating that more than a year after the conversion, softwre support for the Intel Macs is still lagging.