Should I Upgrade To Logic 8?

[Matthew M.]

Hello everyone,

Since 2006, I have been using Logic Pro 7 to record. My goals have always been to write, record, and produce an entire album by myself (mostly pop/rock). Originally, the goal was to do this through virtual instruments (in particular, ESX24 and the other one's through Logic), until I became disenchanted with the virtual instruments on Logic, which I obviously need to sound very real for such a project. Don't get me wrong, some of them are very good, but, overall, I find myself rather unimpressed and find a lot of them (in particular, pianos sound unnatural, drums are very thin, guitars also don't sound quite good) mediocre at best. Because of this, my goal was to just buy all of the instruments and do it the natural way. However, on 5-6-08, I was admitted into USC's Music Industry program, so with my impending move, I've gone back to wanting to do it through virtual instruments, since you can't really fit a home studio in a dorm. So this leaves my question:

On Logic Pro 8, are the additions of the jam packs and other instruments really high quality sounding that would make it worth upgrading to? If not, does anyone know of any virtual instrument software that would prove beneficial in meeting my requirements?

Your help is greatly appreciated. Hope everyone had a very Happy Memorial Day! Thanks!

 

[gecko zzed]

You might as well stay with what you have.

Logic comes with its own suite of virtual instruments, which, as you note, have limitations.

However, Logic itself is not limited by this. There is nothing to prevent you from downloading virtual instruments that suit your purposes and using them within Logic. There are a mess of free ones around, some better than others, and you should be able to find ones you can use happily.

You might also like to consider a sound module (i.e. an outboard solution) that you can drive with Logic's MIDI capability. As a starting point, you can pick up modules such as the Roland Sound Canvas quite cheaply on Ebay these days.

You do not need to upgrade to Logic 8 to get better results.

 

[antichef]

I do find Logic 8 (Express, in my case, without the jam packs) much easier to work in - the UI is greatly improved.

Some of the stock plugins are better, but overall, you can't hear a difference between my LE7 songs and LE8 songs, it's true.