Product Reviews

With the launch of Logic Studio last month, and the attendant hoo-ha about all the dazzling new features therein, Logic Express 8 was always destined to lurk in its shadow, the ugly sister at Studio's coming-out ball. However, anyone who allows pro app snobbery to blind them to Express' charms is missing out on a bit of a bargain.

No more the awkwardly hobbled, frustratingly incomplete recording tool it has previously been, Logic Express 8 is - in all essential respects - Logic Pro 8 without the latter's Studio accoutrements. What's missing? Well, Express has no surround mixing capabilities, it lacks support for certain high-end (i.e. expensive) control surfaces, there is no Pro Tools TDM support and Logic's 'vintage' instruments (EVB3, EVD6, EVP88) have been withheld, as has the Sculpture synth.

A number of Pro's plug-ins are also missing, including the Delay Designer, Multipressor and the Match EQ function. Logic's companion mastering application, Waveburner Pro, is also reserved for the Studio box, as are Soundtrack Pro and Main Stage. Not having Soundtrack Pro in the Express box also means you are limited to Logic's limited audio editing tools, thus missing out on the neat round-trip editing and file processing workflow served up by Studio.

You also don't get Space Designer, leaving you with PlatinumVerb as the best reverb Express has. There are also considerably fewer Apple Loops supplied, compared with the 39GB of Jam Packs in Studio.

So if that's what you don't get, what do you get? You get the same spruced-up Arrange and Mixer windows and streamlined workflow improvements as Logic Pro, with its Dual Channel

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Strip and tabbed Media browser. You get the new Quick Swipe Comping and a host of other tracking and mixing refinements.

You get a comprehensive array of audio processing tools and plug-ins, including Channel EQ, Logic Pro's new Compressor (with its funky selectable behaviour types and sidechain feature), the ever-popular dub-style Tape Delay and the full version of Guitar Amp Pro. Third-party AU plug-ins are also fully supported.

You also get all the ES synths, including the ES1 and ES2, a new PolySynth version of the EVOC20 vocoder (again with the sidechain), the full EXS24 sampler (not just the player), the full version of Logic's Ultrabeat drum machine and plenty more besides. You also get helper I/O plug-ins to incorporate any hardware synths and effects you might have into your Logic mixes, so your musical realm can extend beyond your Mac.

This is actually more useful than it might sound, as another of Express' limitations is that it doesn't support Logic Node for offloading CPU-intensive tasks to spare computers, so the less you rely on software, the more comfortable your Mac will be.

Apple has also seen sense and removed the arbitrary limits on the number of auxiliary tracks and busses that can be deployed (255 and 64 respectively), not to mention the 255 mono or stereo audio channels and independent software instruments that Express now supports. You can also use 15 inserts and eight sends per channel and the maximum audio file resolution is a healthy 24-bit, 192KHz.

All in all, what's not to like? Frankly, very little. Human nature dictates that some people will never settle for the perceived cut-down version of a product, even if they never actually need the missing functionality. But Express users can upgrade to Pro for £200, the difference in price between the products.

The bottom line is that if you genuinely need all of Logic Pro's power and functionality today, then buy Logic Studio - it's comprehensive and no longer prohibitively expensive. However, if your needs and requirements are more modest, or more straightforward, then Logic Express 8 is more than capable of delivering hugely satisfying, fully professional results. You might never exhaust its possibilities.