my first post

[tschoole]

I have been working seriously with Logic for 6 months now. I have developed my own intuitive work flow which I am sure is quite crude, but my creative excitement out wayed the pain of delving into the bibles that came with the program. I read some ones post about how to patch outboard processing. How good are the compressors reverbs etc in Logic, or is it that the serious user has an array of outboard equipment to compliment the program? I am still not creating what I would consider to be of a quality that compares with commercially produced songs. Whats the next level for me beyond my mac,mics,synthesizer,interface and speakers?

[gecko zzed]

Logic's plug-ins are fine, though you could probably find better plug-ins if you search around.

The interface you are using will determine how you use out-board effects. For example, in the Mixer window, you can direct the output of a track to which you want to apply effects to a different output bus (see the output selector above the top of the track faders), leaving the others to the default.

You can take a line from this bus (from your interface) into an effects unit, then out of the unit and back into logic via a spare track (arm and record this). Mix the original plus what you send back to taste.

As you can see, it's a fairly messy way of doing things!

Best of luck.

[Stealthtech]

Software effects in logic or any other program cannot replace hardware but they do a good job. Really if your on a budget and your goal is homemade recordings, the software plugins are designed to save you money as opposed to buying all the hardware to do the same job.

[baker_]

Gecko and Stealth are right. Logic's plug-ins are of very good quality, but outboard gear will always be better. The flip side - outboard gear is expensive.

To further answer your inquiry about how to achieve the expensive commercial sound:

You'll need talent (usually )
A pretty good set of microphones (ones tailored to what you will be recording)
Along with a good mic, you'll need a room to record in that sounds good itself.
After that comes your preamps, interfaces, other parts of the signal chain
Then, of course, you'll need some experience and a good set of ears (which hopefully will come with your experience)

Basically, there's always room for improvements anywhere down the line. The real battle is figuring out what you truly need and filtering out what you don't.

Logic is a great DAW to use to gain experience. Shy of the actual hardware (interfaces, microphones, etc) you'll be able to produce just about anything you can imagine right out of the box.