Having used Logic (on and off) for almost a decade, and Ableton for more than that, I recently decided to stop using Logic. I know both softwares pretty well (I read both manuals) but in the end, having 2 DAWs is useless.
I think overall, Logic has mostly an audience of "hardware" people. As in: musicians who compose and record with hardware, and then mix in Logic. From the top of my head, Calvin Harris and Disclosure use Logic, mostly for putting together recorded audio and mixing, but not really for writing. Also, professional mixers who are used to massive mixing consoles use either Logic, Pro Tools or Cubase. Adele's "Hello" was mixed in Logic. These 3 DAWs have a lot of similarities. One of them is their "skeuomorphic" interface. Why do digital faders look like the real ones? There's no need to. Alos, the arrangement-only view. Or the plugin inserts and bus/aux channeling. But I think all of this emphasizes the need to satisfy the "hardware" audience, who want to have the digital equivalent of their hardware interface.
Ableton on the other hand (and Fruity Loops for that matter) didn't look at the hardware. They created an interface for the digital age. That's why faders are just colored bars. Session view? Genius. Very intuitive. Instrument racks to regroup plugins? Straightforward. You want to do parallel processing? No need for a bus or aux track: just create a second chain in your instrument rack and you've got your parallel processing done. It literally takes 3 clicks to go from a plugin insert to parallel processing. Color-tagging your samples and plugins? Yep. Compare that to Logic where loading a plugin requires you to navigate from dropdown upon dropdown. You can't even group inserts to disable them all at once.
Now I used to go with Logic for my mixing and mastering purposes. Having 2 separate DAWs allowed me to separate the creative from the "engineering" process of mixing. Logic also has great comping features, a nice "flex" mode, a better quantization tool, and nice built-in plugins. Also, the slower workflow felt better for mixing. But now I just do everything in Ableton.
With this update, Logic is going into Ableton territory. Sampler-> Sampler. Quick Sampler->Simpler. Step Sequencer->Session View. But I don't think that adding a few features on top of an outdated workflow will turn me away from Ableton.
It's weird that they're going into that direction because I always felt that there was a clear distinction between Ableton and Logic, and that the lack of crucial Ableton features (like the aforementioned comping) was to not annoy the Logic developers. But now I guess it's open season?
>It's weird that they're going into that direction...
I think it's a reflection of the fact that there are (at least) two different kinds of ways to make music:
1. the "traditional" way of recording individual instruments in a more or less linear fashion
2. curating/compiling pieces of pre-recorded audio, aka samples, and triggering a sequence of them on-the-fly, while recording that sequence.
Each calls for a different set of tools and workflow. Logic's roots are in the former but Ableton tapped into the latter. Logic is trying to appeal to both.
I think overall, Logic has mostly an audience of "hardware" people. As in: musicians who compose and record with hardware, and then mix in Logic. From the top of my head, Calvin Harris and Disclosure use Logic, mostly for putting together recorded audio and mixing, but not really for writing. Also, professional mixers who are used to massive mixing consoles use either Logic, Pro Tools or Cubase. Adele's "Hello" was mixed in Logic. These 3 DAWs have a lot of similarities. One of them is their "skeuomorphic" interface. Why do digital faders look like the real ones? There's no need to. Alos, the arrangement-only view. Or the plugin inserts and bus/aux channeling. But I think all of this emphasizes the need to satisfy the "hardware" audience, who want to have the digital equivalent of their hardware interface.
Ableton on the other hand (and Fruity Loops for that matter) didn't look at the hardware. They created an interface for the digital age. That's why faders are just colored bars. Session view? Genius. Very intuitive. Instrument racks to regroup plugins? Straightforward. You want to do parallel processing? No need for a bus or aux track: just create a second chain in your instrument rack and you've got your parallel processing done. It literally takes 3 clicks to go from a plugin insert to parallel processing. Color-tagging your samples and plugins? Yep. Compare that to Logic where loading a plugin requires you to navigate from dropdown upon dropdown. You can't even group inserts to disable them all at once.
Now I used to go with Logic for my mixing and mastering purposes. Having 2 separate DAWs allowed me to separate the creative from the "engineering" process of mixing. Logic also has great comping features, a nice "flex" mode, a better quantization tool, and nice built-in plugins. Also, the slower workflow felt better for mixing. But now I just do everything in Ableton.
With this update, Logic is going into Ableton territory. Sampler-> Sampler. Quick Sampler->Simpler. Step Sequencer->Session View. But I don't think that adding a few features on top of an outdated workflow will turn me away from Ableton.
It's weird that they're going into that direction because I always felt that there was a clear distinction between Ableton and Logic, and that the lack of crucial Ableton features (like the aforementioned comping) was to not annoy the Logic developers. But now I guess it's open season?