by: Matt Beckwith , Associate Editor

I’ve played the guitar since high school and started dabbling with “home recording” more than a decade ago. My first piece of recording hardware was a a Yamaha MT120s, a state-of-the-art, 4-track recorder tape recorder. Okay, not so state-of-the-art, but I sure thought it was. Finally, I could record a drum part from my synthesizer and then play it back and record my bass and then guitar parts. I felt like a superstar!

Then, several years ago, I decided to go high-tech and, with the help of a computer-geek-musician friend, built a computer specifically for audio recording. I didn’t know any better so I went with Windows 98. After test driving a few audio recording programs including CakeWalk, CakeWalk Sonar and Cubase I eventually settled on eMagic’s Logic, version 4.0. With a brand new digital mixer, a Roland VM3100 Pro designed to work specifically with Logic and a couple of Roland DS50 monitors I was ready to rock!

The Logic interface was simple and intuitive and made recording light years easier than it was with my old four-track tape recorder. I soon found I was spending more time recording other musicians than playing music myself and had a blast doing it. As my recordings started getting longer and had more tracks my computer started to buckle under the pressure. After only two years I had maxed out my computer and was growing increasingly frustrated with the regular lock-ups and shut downs.

I suffered through the pain for a few more years (yes, I said years) and watched as my hardware and software become more obsolete everyday. When I finally bought my first Mac I looked into using it with my digital mixer only to discover that the mixer wasn’t designed to be a digital mixer with any other software other than eMagic’s Logic, and only on a Windows machine. Then I remembered that eMagic had been acquired by Apple! What great news, I thought! Not so much. At every turn, my hardware and software grew further and further apart until I decided I was going to have to start over. I bought a MOTU UltraLite for digital mixing. WIth 10 inputs and 14 outputs it was more robust than my Roland mixer and since it was FireWire, it would be less likely that I would suffer the same fate of being phased out by the next new technology.

Once I got the UltraLite I decided to bite the bullet and buy Logic Express for $299 since there was no upgrade available for my Windows version. I am only a recreational musician but felt comfortable in Logic and believed that it was best to stay with what I already knew. I was blown away by all of the improvements over version 4.0 but quickly got lost in all of those new features. There are so many aspects of Logic I don’t fully understand and now rarely even open it. When I want to record something, I go straight to GarageBand. Given that the UltraLite is FireWire, GarageBand recognizes it as a new input and allows me to dynamically assign input channels to separate tracks within GarageBand - something I didn’t realize I could do outside of Logic. With the great effects and tools in GarageBand it’s all I’ll ever need.

Apart from being able to finally open all of my old .LSO files, I have given up on Logic Express. Someday I hope to have more time to learn about the killer tools in Logic, but until then I’m sticking with GarageBand, it truly is the most bang-for-the-buck audio recording software out there… and It only cost me $299 to realize it.