Apple Logic Pro /LogicExpress Discussion

> When you say you gave it a serious try, what did this entail?

I did the same as I did with Logic and Cubase. I decided I was going to
rough it through the remaking of one of my old songs (written back in the
late 70's). What I found was that - to my amazement - DP does not have the
equivalent of Regions for MIDI - only for Audio. Both Sonar and Cubase do,
but all you get with DP is a computer generated (cannot be modified by the
user) grouping of midi notes that it "thinks" are related. It is only
available in the Tracks view and there is very little you can do with them.
For instance, I was using an external sound module and decided I wanted to
use EWQLSO instead. Creating the soft synth track was painless, (much easier
than Logic), but you can't copy the midi events from a midi track to a soft
synth track because DP will only allow you to copy events among identical
track types. So I was going to have to replay and re-edit the entire track?
I don't think so... ;) Oh yea, and the tracks view is *tiny* and I could
find no way to zoom the size of the a track vertically.

In addition, although DP has a rather complete set of midi editing features,
they are cumbersome compared to Logic. Example:

To change all selected note lengths to be equal in Logic, just hold down
Ctrl+Option while dragging. You have to open a dialog in DP and set the note
length and then click OK. Selecting midi notes is different too. In Logic,
if a rubberband selection touches a note it will be selected, in DP you must
encompass the entire note for it to be selected. Or wait, I think that it is
that you must select the "start" of the note. At any rate, it is pain.

DP has an info line in the titlebar of the midi editor window, but if you
drag a value up or down with the mouse to increase or decrease it, it gets
focus (becomes selected) and you must press enter or click on another
control to finish the action. If you select more than one note, the info
line disappears. If I could have edited the info line with multiple notes
selected (i.e. to change the length of all selected notes it would have been
very useful, but no.

Want to create legato with DP? It's a real pain. Just Shift+Tab in Logic.

I really hate DP's method of drawing/editing automation too. It is just
clunky compared to Logic. Which by-the-way is simply untouchable by any
other DAW I've used.

Finally, DP insists on defaulting to zoom sizes that are far too small for
my personal taste. If I change the settings in the arrange window for the
size of notes, the next time I open the song, they've reverted back to the
default size.

Anyway, you get the picture. The lack of the equivalent of a region for midi
events was a show stopper right away, but I still kept going trying to
convince myself there must be some other redeeming feature that would take
its place. There wasn't.

I wish that Logic had the equivalent of the consolidated window in DP, but
I'll put up with Logic's separate Windows any day to have its power and
flexibility.

I will say this though, DPs manual and index are light years better than
Logic's.

Have you tried DP? If so, what was your take on it compared to Logic?

Kamm