Experienced Logic & Pro Tools TDM users!

[TiPo]

What does Logic can do in MIDI that in Pro Tools TDM cannot be done or would be difficult and time consuming to do so?

Since I don’t know much about Logic I am asking all of those people who are very experienced users in both Logic and Pro Tools TDM. I am interested to know the advantages or like in Logic from an experienced user's point of view.

[Evil Jack]

This for starters:

Logic Pros: Great soft synths. V Powerful midi features
Logic Cons: Awful, fiddly audio editing. Confusing GUI (a mess of menus and windows)

PT Pros: Best audio editing ever. Easy to use GUI. Stability. DSP cards....
PT Cons: VERY BASIC midi. Poor soft synth support and what there is is not V reliable.

[relaxo]

This for starters:

Logic Pros: Great soft synths and samplers. V Powerful midi features. For the poweruser, very customizable, powerful enough to to anything and everything very easily and quickly. Best for technically minded people and/or composers. DSP cards....

Logic Cons: decent, but not as good as PT editing and mixing. Confusing GUI for some (many powerful menus and windows) 95% bug-less.

PT Pros: Best audio editing ever. Easy to use GUI. Stability. DSP cards.... 99% bug-less. Excellent hardware controllers and is a must have in the pro audio world for compatibility.

PT Cons: VERY BASIC midi. Poor soft synth support and what there is is not V reliable.

[Evil Jack]

Ooops. Sorry if I touched a nerve Relaxo! (I read your post in the other thread)
I meant the Logic comments for someone who has never used it (Tipo) , and what they can expect to find the first time they fire it up...

I use it just about every working day (for 10 years+) and love it (but not for audio ).

[Gio Mix]

Logic "cannot be beat" (IMO) in MIDI ability. It'll practically talk to everything.
I even have midi lights that I've controlled from Logic, Live, and in the studio to set the mood.
With Logic's Environments you can control anything you want. If musicians show up with their keyboards you can sequence them into Logic very easily , control their keyboards and assign those "performances" to other Virtual synths and fatten up the sound, (or find better sounds than the ones the musicians have from their own rigs) or route it to any tone module you own. All this very easily.
The samplers and synths that Logic has are very powerful, and its Rewire support is great too. You can play another programs synths from inside Logic, unlike PT.
I agree with the fact that Audio editing is a bit cumbersome. I usually dump my stuff over to PT and then get to the Audio editing part of production. For Sound Design Logic cant be beat (IMO again) load up your video, open up a bunch of synths and samplers and Bust away some cool sounds, synced to picture.

Best of luck.

[mike16877]

The biggest con of all is that when logic is used as a front end for Pro tools you end up missing out on both programs best features.

Not only will you need to buy the software ($999) you will also need to buy the HD extension.....another con if you ask me. You may want to go for the ESB bridge also, which in theory gives you 8 channels of native audio...yes it does, but it complicates matters within the mixing environment. If you want to use rewire while using Logic as a front end for tools then forget it. As far as I know nobody has got it to work, and neither could I. In fact rewire within Logic has always been buggy even when used in Native mode....(Another little bug swept under the carpet). Digidesign implemented rewire perfectly at their first attempt and its flawless.

The audio editing will frustrate the hell out of you when using Logic. If you are used to Pro tools editing your in for a real shock.

The large amount of menus in Logic is pathetic. To me its like they simply bolted on another menu with each new version and gave no consideration to the end user. Logic programmers dont make music.

The environment in Logic is a pure joke. I cant even explain how stupid that system is. Its been there since Logic 2 and hasnt changed.

The only people that LoVe Logic are the ones that have used it for years. For a newbie I think you have to tread very carefully. There is nothing Logic can do that tools cant.

i noticed someone said they were controlling lights with Logics midi.........Do you really need your DAW to that?

I gave up on Logic with the arrival of Pro tools 6. Rewire has been a godsend for me as well as the FX Xpansion VSt wrapper. I use Ableton Live, reason and a few other apps and have never looked back. I was very happy to get rid of Logic as I always felt it diluted the pro tools experience

BUT, I do believe Logic 7 will be vastly improved and the truth be known I am interested to see what it looks...and perhaps feels like.

[Nick Batzdorf]

Tipo, the question isn't what Logic can do with MIDI but how quickly and easily it can be done. This is especially noticeable when you're dealing with complicated templates and large sample libraries.

Logic is first and foremost a composition program, while Pro Tools is a production program. I use both.

[MoreMeintheMonitors]

Things you can do in Logic that you can't do in Pro Tools (or can't do without a very time consuming process):

1. Explode midi tracks by any value (notes, velocity, etc)
2. Discrete selection of midi data - again, by almost any parameter.
3. Transformation of midi data - say tranforming all midi note #64 to #63 or converting aftertouch to another controller value.
4. Built in arps, chord memorizer and midi delay lines.
5. Selective filtering of midi data (beyond the standard stuff available in PT)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. There's more, I'm sure, but I'm not in front of my system at the moment...

[Nick Batzdorf]

There's lots more! Notation, for openers.

To me the functions you've listed are very useful and important, but they're down the line a little. Fundamentally, Logic is set up for bouncing around different views of the MIDI data using its screensets. Everything is interactive between windows (unless you unlink them), so you can select something in one window and then work on it in another. For example, my screenset #2 has an Arrange window on the left monitor and a Matrix editor (piano roll) on the right. Whatever I point at on the left is what's shown in the right.

Everyone has different ways of working/thinking, and you can customize Logic for that - which is what makes it brilliant and also what makes it complicated. It's very detailed. Even the tool that pressing the Command key brings up is stored with the window in a screenset.

On the other hand, Pro Tools' ability to do everything from one window (Edit) is equally clever; you don't even need the Mixer window. But that doesn't work as well for MIDI, in my opinion.

[Peter Duemmler]

Not only will you need to buy the software ($999) you will also need to buy the HD extension.....another con if you ask me. You may want to go for the ESB bridge also

Both PT HD extension and ESB are part of the $999 Logic Pro package.

Peter