Sonar 8 or Logic 9 - PC or Mac ?

[casey campbell]

yup...

[Zoltar]

I have very fond memories of my "infinite track" recording.

step one: Plug HR-16 drum machine and tele into Zoom 9002 rockman-esque headphone amp in same mixer into Realistic (Radio Shack) mixer

step two: play guitar live to drum machine while recording on Boombox A.

step three: Swap tape from Boombox A to Boombox B. Patch Boombox B into Realistic mixer instead of drum machine. Record live vocals and 2nd layer of guitar into Boombox A. Dig natural chorusing, since boomboxes have slightly different tape speeds.

I used to have to start tuned down a few steps because the playing deck was almost a step faster than the recording deck. If only the fast one could record, my life would have been easier. We even had a vcr for samples, made some alright sounding garbage. and yes, we used the Zoom 9002 also.

after that, I had a 4 track with a broken pre-amp (tracks 2 and 4) so I would have to do a backwards bounce to get those tracks. great time to add reverb, and if you vary the pitch while backwards bouncing, the reverb does some crazy-good things.

Recording with whatever you have was a great way to get through high school

[getreel]

I love Macs and while I do think the Mac OS is superior to Windows, I am a HUGE Sonar fan. So, in my studio, I use a PC mostly though I have a MacBook with Harrison Mixbus on it as well. I am using Sonar version 7 still but it's pretty close to the same. Sonar is great and has tons of great features and plugins even on version 7. I've had a couple of stability issues here and there but nothing major and nothing that has caused data loss or any downtime. The MIDI features are the best in the business IMHO. Sonar does have a learning curve but you can get recording very easily and still be using it as you learn for the most part. Also like the PC for audio better because there are way more plugins out there, especially free ones for Windows.

[GLEA]

I use Logic and Digital Performer. The audio editing in Logic isn't nearly as friendly as DP, but the other features make it a winner. I like Logic for the ease of putting something together fast. For demos or the sort of film work I do, I can have a song going in just a few minutes. The loop libraries and the software instruments are killer. Great plug-ins too. DP works better for me when I'm doing band stuff. It works more like a tape machine and I can navigate takes and such a lot faster than Logic.


... now some of these issues with Logic may come from the fact that it's a pretty deep application and I've not got as many hours on it as DP. I'm just now digging into the Apple Loops tool, and while I can make it work, there are some big questions I have. I often find myself moving tracks between programs to take advantage of the best of both. Sound Flowerbed makes it easy to use Logic soft synths on DP projects.

I've spent the last month or two exclusively working in Logic and hope I come out of this knowing a lot more about it. The price is hard to beat.

btw, I'm working on an older G5, which I bought reconditioned. I've got 32 channels of MOTU and a Soundcraft Ghost, so it's a hybrid of in/out of the box mixing. The best of both worlds I'd think.