Re: [EXS] Re: Goodbye
2005-06-06 by Sascha Franck
Hi, First off, thanks for everybody's support, I really feel honored. After some research it seems that it was indeed just Yahoo acting up... but I never got any mailer daemon failure notifications or anything else, plus, some of my posts that didn't make contained some more or less "sneaky" side remarks towards Apple indeed, so I thought they were moderated. But then, it might've indeed only been some coincidence. So my sincere apologies to the moderators. However, I'd like to comment on what Eli wrote (and I promise not to start a platform war or whatsoever), even if this would belong to some OT thread. > Sorry to hear you are leaving. I guess it's inevitable that as Logic > grows and Apple plays more and more of a role in it's presence, it can > seem like grass roots user groups like ours are getting co-opted into > the mainstream, and regulated by "the man". But I think the reality is > that, despite the politics behind Logic, it's just getting to be a much > more widely known and used program. I beg to strongly differ here. It *might* be different over there in america, but over here it seems to be dwindling away from the market. As some of you may know, I'm teaching computer music classes over here at the local conservatory. The students mostly are professional musicians (or close to become such) and I'm sure some of them somewhat plan to set up semi-professional homestudios (or even something better/bigger) for themselves too. Now, my classes are all about "reproduce things you learned at home without spending a fortune". I did quite some investigations before I started setting up the media lab, and while we probably could've afforded some lower level Macs as well (which would've been a godsend for me personally as I could've continued teaching with Logic), in the end I just *had* to buy PCs, simply because none of the people I asked allready owned a Mac, but almost everybody owned a pretty much reasonable PC allready. FWIW, by spending, say, 300-500 Euro for a proper soundcard and some sequencer program, you can turn most actual PCs into a pretty much reasonable audio workstation, at least good enough for a homestudio. Compared to that some "hey, you better buy a new computer (a Mac) in order to being able to run Logic" would've been fairly bad advice in my book. And then, it's not as if I didn't recommend this as another solution - I actually allways show them how much superior Logic (6.x on our studio machines and even 5.5.1 on my laptop) is over SX (which is what we are using as our PC sequencers), regarding quite a lot of aspects. Almost everybody usually even agrees, but there's not enough of agreement which would make people think about spending around 1500 Euro (or something around that) for a new computer, especially considering they allready own a reasonable one. Of course, in case you got no proper machine allready, in case you can get Logic at an educational price (which really is a steal), the complete package would be a fairly priced one. But as said, all the folks I've been teaching so far allready own computers. The same situation is reflected when you walk into the local music stores. Usually there's no Macs around (admittedly, Hannovers music shops are the lousiest around, but it's not much different in other cities) but quite some PCs. So, the only chance to actually see Logic in action is to either visit some studio or one of the few Mac dealers - and obviously, the latter usually got no idea what Logic is even doing. Now, finally, let's think about what those future wannabe studio owners and composers will be updating to, considering they a) are allready used to PCs, b) have some PC based programs allready and c) made good experiences (which, believe it or don't, is possible on PCs). Will they all of a sudden think about buying a Mac just to buy a new program which they'd have to learn in addition? Pretty much unlikely in my book. I know, in most professional studios the main machines are still Macs, and their main sequencer usually still is Logic. But I can clearly see this changing over here. There's a few die-hard Logic users (such as me) who will actually switch from PCs to Macs, but these are rare. And in, say, 5-10 years from now on, the people I'm teaching will probably run their own studios. They won't be using Macs. As said, the situation might be different in other parts of the world, but I think my observations are pretty much valid for a large part of the newcomer business in germany (and probably the rest of Europe as well). I know about quite some Apple efforts made in the USA, such as sponsoring media labs in schools, but this is rarely happening over here - on the other hand almost each and every school over here (standard schools that is) allready has a PC-equipped media lab, which of course might be used for music lessons as well. Sorry for that lengthy excurse. Anyways, I wanted to add something else, regarding Apple/Logic observations. Meanwhile I'm rather familiar with working on Macs as well, and I'm really dissapointed about the direction Logic development took since the takeover. Of course, Logic is still a brilliant program from the ergonomical aspects, dual G5s are kickass machines when it comes to raw CPU performance, especially when running an optimized program such as Logic, OSX is pretty easy to maintain once you looked up a few things and so on... But: How the most optimized audio sequencer, running on one of the most expensive computers isn't able to run half the audio tracks I can run on my 6 year old audio PC (meanwhile serving as an office PC) is completely beyond my understanding (and yes, I did the comparisons myself). It also doesn't make it into my mind how you could only use 2 internal HDDs, 3 PCI cards and one internal CD/DVD drive. Aren't HUGE sample libraries part of almost each and every audio production? Aren't DSP cards the tools of the trade these years? Aren't people copying CDs and DVDs 1:1 since ages without having to do images first? No, I don't think this is senseless Apple "dissing" - actually more to the opposite. IMO this is criticism the folks in Cupertino should be aware of. PCs with up to 8 internal HDD connectors exist because there was a demand for it. You need to spend half of a fortune to get even only 4 HDDs connected to a Mac. Not to forget that FW busses still don't deliver the same performance as S-ATA/IDE ones. Also, I just configured a Nuendo based PC for a friend, he's using 2 UADs and a PoCo, along with a MoTU. Not possible on a Mac. I don't think there's any Mac based DAW user who would mind having an option to throw in 1-2 more HDDs for his/her sample collection. And I also don't think Logic users would be all too sad if audio track performance was finally on par with Cubase SX. And finally I don't think I'd say anything different if I allready owned a Mac. These requests should be raised as loud as possible, it's got nothing to do with "Macs vs. PCs" or so - but with the future of Logic (and probably partially with the future of Apple as well). You know, I actually don't even think the Apple takeover was all that much of a bad move for Logic - working closely along with the OS programming company surely has its benefits... but so far IMO the deal hasn't shown its worth yet, and (unfortunately, believe me, as a true Logic afficionado I wish it was any different) it doesn't seem to get all that much better, mainly due to the absence of any Macs in the newcomer department, at least that's the result of my observations. Fortunately for my own stuff I've got no problems in using 5.5.1./PC for quite a while longer (especially since I got Energy XT, which has got to be THE enhancement for Logic/PC users), so my Mac lust is rather tamed right now. However, sorry for the lengthy post - and again my apologies to the moderators. I know they're usually doing a great job. Regards, Sascha