moving to logic pro

[alpinito]

Alright.. After years of using a PC as a base for everything, I moved to a mac and with only two days of using and abusing it I can't believe the amount of time that I wasted using a PC...

My main DAW has always been Sonar.. and I want to know if there's any way to move my previous projects to Logic Pro 8.. since that's the one I want to start using now.

I'd really appreciate any comments or suggestions...

Cheers!

Alejandro

[richiebee]

I don't know either product particularly well, but I would think that OMF would be the option you should look at since that is really the standard open format.

What is the content of the Sonar files? Are they MIDI? Audio? Both?

[alpinito]

it is just audio.. I've already adedd some effects but nothing representative... just reverb and compressors...

Thanks for answering.. I will try that and post any results..

Alejandro

[brandondrury]

After years of using a PC as a base for everything, I moved to a mac and with only two days of using and abusing it I can't believe the amount of time that I wasted using a PC...

Interesting. Can you describe your experiences? I often hear the hype, but I'd much rather hear someone's real world opinion who has used both.

Brandon

[alpinito]

haha.. hey Brandon..

not that everything's bad with windows, but there is a huge difference when talkin about stability and ease of use mainly... the operating system starts when loaded as opposite of windows which starts and then after loads the other components... BIG DIFFERENCE!!! in my case, got the iMac 24" and the screen resolution is just incredible... it's huge... in any case that could've been solved in windows too, so not a break point here... I had a nice PC 2GB ram, 160 GB HD and an 250GB external HD, dual core proc. 1.6 Ghz and was running SONAR7 PE as a main DAW... To make my PC able to handle Sonar, I had to tweak every single thing to performance mode.. which meant no nice themes, no fancy transparencies, and many other characteristics lost.. and it worked only to certain point... I used a nice Toneport UX2 interface and had no problem with it.. but then I upgraded to a firestudio Project problems showed up... firewire cards.. driver issues.. being such annoying that forced me back to the toneport... and then.. I went grandma's-laptop shopping and applied for a store credit card and I was approved and I got the mac and logic pro too, since I've read a lot about that one...

I'm pretty much impressed with this computer... It's waaaay beyond PC's capabilities.. PC is a great machine for games though!!!

PS.. It might have been windows vista the thing that put me far from PC...

who knows...

[robgb]

Originally Posted by alpinito

Alright.. After years of using a PC as a base for everything, I moved to a mac and with only two days of using and abusing it I can't believe the amount of time that I wasted using a PC...

My main DAW has always been Sonar.. and I want to know if there's any way to move my previous projects to Logic Pro 8.. since that's the one I want to start using now.

I'd really appreciate any comments or suggestions...

Cheers!

Alejandro

I don't know about moving your projects, other than simply moving the wav files over. But I'm right there with you on the Logic front.

I spent years using PC's with Sonar, then Nuendo, for recording and midi. Then recently I decided to expand my horizons a bit and bought a Mac. After playing a bit with GarageBand, I though I'd give Logic 8 a whirl.

Oh. My. God.

Within half an hour of using Logic I was already twice as productive as I ever was with Nuendo or Sonar. I couldn't believe the power Logic had, and a workflow that just -- for me, at least -- WORKED.

Say what you will about Apple -- I certainly have my complaints -- but they sure as hell know how to build a DAW. Logic is, by far, the best one I've used. And I'm a diehard PC guy.

[sparqee]

If you have a recent version of Sonar you should be able to export projects in OMF and then import into Logic. Be careful about long file names for the audio files though. If you end up with truncated DOS file names Logic won't be able to match them up with the references in the OMF file.

[alpinito]

yeah, it worked... but guess what!!! LOL!! I'm having trouble with windows to export some of the files !!! it kinda knows I'm just leavin it away!! ha!!

Thank you for the advice!!!

Cheers!

[brandondrury]

Thanks for explaining your situation.

It sounds like all your gripes about the PC are well documented.

All Windows systems need to be optimized, unfortunately. Because there is the freedom to select from multiple hardware components in each stage, the responsibilty to choose components that work well together arises. Some people consider this choice to be a form of slavery.

Maybe I'm totally wrong here, but it seems that the Mac does get the thumbs up for easy of setup. For people who don't want to dig in or don't have time to dig into things like chipsets, I could see where this is valuable.

However, the other side of me is bothered by the fact that you had to put this on a credit card. It seems like simply reading up the on the Firestudio Project's requirements and then meeting those requirements would have been exponentially less expensive than purchasing a brand new Mac.

I guess I'm of the opinon that if you require the luxury of easy setup, you shouldn't be paying interest (or risking high interest) on it.

Regardless, debt or not, it sounds like you are happy. It's great that you've got a rig you are happy with.

How is the learning curve in Logic? What were you using before?

Brandon

[robgb]

There's no question that Macs are expensive, which is why I bought a Mac Mini when I decided to go Mac. Doesn't cost much, but it's pretty powerful (Core 2 Duo) and runs Logic quite well.

You can build a much more powerful PC for about the same price, and if you're ambitious you can enter the legally ambiguous world of the Hackintosh. A lot of people are having success loading their OSX disks on their homebuilt PCs. I haven't done this myself, so don't know how it would work for audio, but if they work well, then you could have an extremely powerful machine WITH Logic, for a fraction of the outrageous Mac prices.

Again, legally ambiguous. Part of Apple's EULA is that you can't install OSX on non-Mac labeled hardware, but some say the EULA is not legally enforceable, while others simply paste an Apple sticker on their case. There's even a company that makes computers that will accept OSX (psystar). They're being sued by Apple, but have so far refused to stop selling them, claiming that Apple doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Whatever. I find the mini works just fine for me.

Originally Posted by brandondrury

Thanks for explaining your situation.

It sounds like all your gripes about the PC are well documented.

All Windows systems need to be optimized, unfortunately. Because there is the freedom to select from multiple hardware components in each stage, the responsibilty to choose components that work well together arises. Some people consider this choice to be a form of slavery.

Maybe I'm totally wrong here, but it seems that the Mac does get the thumbs up for easy of setup. For people who don't want to dig in or don't have time to dig into things like chipsets, I could see where this is valuable.

However, the other side of me is bothered by the fact that you had to put this on a credit card. It seems like simply reading up the on the Firestudio Project's requirements and then meeting those requirements would have been exponentially less expensive than purchasing a brand new Mac.

I guess I'm of the opinon that if you require the luxury of easy setup, you shouldn't be paying interest (or risking high interest) on it.

Regardless, debt or not, it sounds like you are happy. It's great that you've got a rig you are happy with.

How is the learning curve in Logic? What were you using before?

Brandon