Music • Sound • Video • Art

It’s interesting sometimes how restrictions (in this case a time restriction) can lead to interesting insights.

A friend of mine sent an email yesterday. The short exchange (I was pressed for time) is below pretty much verbatim.

On Wednesday, January 28, 2009,  [my friend] wrote:

>lunch sounds good…
>
>btw, what kinda music software do you use? and what’s good out there
>for mac?

I replied:

I use Digital Performer, Logic, Live and Reason depending on what I am working on.

Reason – Very complete and relatively inexpensive. I believe there is a demo at their site (www.propellerheads.se). Strength: All in one, rock solid, reasonable CPU demands. Cons: Self contained; (To add vocals or external audio tracks have to use it via ReWire with another application.)

Live – Absolutely fantastic. The new Live8 will be even more phenomenal than the amazing Live 7. I discuss the new Live 8 on my blog (scroll down below the “Chinese HipHop” article). You can also get a demo from their site. (www.ableton.com) Pros: Effin’ fantastic program with amazing loop playing capabilities and built-in plug-ins. Cons: Not many.

LogicStudio – Amazing what you get for $499 — loops, plug-ins, industrial strength sequencer. If you were seriously getting into music, this would be perhaps the single best purchase you could make. Pros: AMAZING VALUE; rock solid; industrial strength; lots of included plug-ins and instruments; Cons: Learning curve

Digital Performer – Offers less than Logic as far as plugins and stuff, but a more “traditional” workflow if you’ve used traditional tape-based studios. Also much better at film scoring than any of the other listed here. (www.motu.com) Pros: Solid, mature application; great audio and film scoring tools; Cons: Few plug-ins bundled with application; not as CPU efficient as the other apps.

Hey, don’t overlook GarageBand. Seems like a toy but is really very powerful. And any GB project can be opened in Logic later.

Next Tuesday, Thursday or Friday will work for lunch. Where?

What struck me is how poorly DP stacked up vis-a-vis the other apps in my mind as I wrote this quick, “off the top of my head” round up for my friend. I had to struggle a little bit. Not that DP is bad (I LIKE DP), just that the “energy” around it if you will seems…subdued. That made me reflect a bit.

I believe MOTU is faced with some issues concerning DP.

• First, the package is seemingly “overpriced” given whats included vis-a-vis LOGIC, Cubase, Sonar, etc.
• Second, the only magazine that regularly features DP is SoundonSound (www.soundonsound.com). The rest – FutureMusic, ComputerMusic, MusicTech, Keyboard, Electronic Musician, ReMix, etc., rarely if ever feature DP “how to’s” or use DP to illustrate technique. It’s almost always, Logic, Live, Cubase, or Sonar. MOTU should not underestimate how much this frames the mindset of folks coming into the industry.
• Third, it’s hard to learn about DP. There are not many third party sources of info. The best and nearly only tutorial DVD is from MacAudioLabs. There are maybe TWO other books out there. And that’s it.
• Fourth, DP’s CPU efficiency just is not “there” when you compare it to the others. Mind you, it’s not terrible — you can get a lot done, and the new pre-render thing helps (if you can make it work for you), but LOGIC and LIVE appear to be more efficient and able to run more plug-ins on a given system.
• Fifth, and I think this applies to all of the “old line” sequencers ?- DP is stuck in a traditional studio / tape deck / production paradigm. That’s OK, but it would be interesting to see some new capabilities and design philosophy incorporating the potential for user customization/extension and collaboration (ala the new ‘Share’ and ‘Extend’ philosophies of Ableton LIVE).
• Sixth, DP does not appear to want an active relationship with it’s customers. The company relies on the voluntary efforts of James Steele and his wonderful community over at MOTUNATION (www.motunation.com) to provide significant tech support and mentorship for users. No reason MOTU shouldn’t rely on an active user community, but it seems like they figure MOTUNATION’s existence absolves them of having to interact with, aggresively support, or concern themselves with their user base in any organized and visible way. I don’t think that model works well in the long-term.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been revisiting LOGIC for different reasons. More on that, and my LOGIC template, next time.

[EDIT 02/04/09: To be fair to MOTU on that last point concerning customer relationships: Apple is no better and is on several measures worse. AT least it IS posiible to get some tech support out of MOTU...]