Choosing a composing/music app
cubase 5 or logic 9 are much better for midi based composition, and cubase has some amazing vst plugins and packs coming out for it at the moment.
I do fine with Sonar 7 Producer edition. But which app is best for you will depend a bit on your composition style. If you don't have a composition style yet then there's not much to choose between the apps, I think.
Quote:Original post by grhufnagl
@jjandreau:
Would one of the new 27" iMacs handle it ok with a Quard Core i7 and 8GB of RAM?
I would say you're all set, these were the recommended spec requirements for the mac:
Mac Pro Quad-Core Xeon 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM
If you've got quad i7's, then you should be more than fine.
Happy Searching!
jj
I'll also add that if you use East-West, be prepared to sound like every other young aspiring film/game music composer. My honest advice would be to learn a decent bit about actual composing first, and also a bit about mixing, before jumping in and buying hundreds of dollars worth of software that you'll stumble through for a while, and then even when you stop stumbling through, your work will still likely sound very close to what your contemporaries are doing. What learning composition will do is help you to not only develop your own sound, but it will help you avoid the pitfalls of instrumentation that everyone else does, therefore you will, by default, develop favorite ways of doing things and in doing so create your own sound. I used EWQL for a year, but then relegated to Reason 3 because of the lack of uniqueness in sonics that my compositions had. Since then I've created much more inspired work with reason, and I can get it and its (albeit, sometimes crappy) synths to sound way better than I could ever get EWQL to.
My suggestion would be to start out with Garritan Personal Orchestra. It's cheap and you can get your feet wet.
If you really want to spend the big bucks, then don't bother with a second-rate orchestral library like EQWL. Get the Vienna Symphonic Library. Not even EWQL Platinum compares to that.
But let me iterate... it's not the software that makes the composer. I'd still advise you to learn how to compose before jumping into this.
My suggestion would be to start out with Garritan Personal Orchestra. It's cheap and you can get your feet wet.
If you really want to spend the big bucks, then don't bother with a second-rate orchestral library like EQWL. Get the Vienna Symphonic Library. Not even EWQL Platinum compares to that.
But let me iterate... it's not the software that makes the composer. I'd still advise you to learn how to compose before jumping into this.
Hello;
ProTools requires a ProTools supporting sound card, HD system already comes with a soundcard itself, you add on your DSP cards to it. MBox 2 is a great soundcard to pick but you can work on any M-Powered M-Audio card as well for cheaper solutions, since they also support ProTools LE.
However, ProTools is the most "user friendly" and "capable" program I have seen so far. Especially for editing, its a gem.
East West libraries are great in their value/performance ratio. Everyone loves Vienna Symphony but paying it 10.000 USD is unnecessary. East West fills the gap of "need for professional sounds" and "without spending a fortune" quite well. If you are working on big AAA productions to cover your expenses that much, its most probable that you will be asked to record live anyway and you would be using VSTs for demo-purposes. For projects that accept VSTs, using Vienna Symphony is not price effective, even though it sounds really appealing.
However, if you are unsure of your composing skills and mixing skills, having the best VSTs won't change much. Also, if you are to start working on things new, I suggest going on for a studio / home studio monitor first on your expenditures list.
Your Mac Mini can run those applications but you won't be able to use any plug-ins / VSTs. ProTools especially loves to use any resource it sees. If you copy a file to your phone, it even creates a DigiDesign core directory and database there as well.
Also note that if you learn how to work on EQ's well, and how to use a compressor effectively, you can make out better sounds with cheaper VST's than an expensive one's default tones. Especially the mid frequencies almost always need a "touch" in VSTs. If you know how to work on EQs well, you can make East West sound way over its standart performance as well. To be sincere, I worked with worse live orchestras than East West standart performance on a Midi, even without velocity touches.
ProTools requires a ProTools supporting sound card, HD system already comes with a soundcard itself, you add on your DSP cards to it. MBox 2 is a great soundcard to pick but you can work on any M-Powered M-Audio card as well for cheaper solutions, since they also support ProTools LE.
However, ProTools is the most "user friendly" and "capable" program I have seen so far. Especially for editing, its a gem.
East West libraries are great in their value/performance ratio. Everyone loves Vienna Symphony but paying it 10.000 USD is unnecessary. East West fills the gap of "need for professional sounds" and "without spending a fortune" quite well. If you are working on big AAA productions to cover your expenses that much, its most probable that you will be asked to record live anyway and you would be using VSTs for demo-purposes. For projects that accept VSTs, using Vienna Symphony is not price effective, even though it sounds really appealing.
However, if you are unsure of your composing skills and mixing skills, having the best VSTs won't change much. Also, if you are to start working on things new, I suggest going on for a studio / home studio monitor first on your expenditures list.
Your Mac Mini can run those applications but you won't be able to use any plug-ins / VSTs. ProTools especially loves to use any resource it sees. If you copy a file to your phone, it even creates a DigiDesign core directory and database there as well.
Also note that if you learn how to work on EQ's well, and how to use a compressor effectively, you can make out better sounds with cheaper VST's than an expensive one's default tones. Especially the mid frequencies almost always need a "touch" in VSTs. If you know how to work on EQs well, you can make East West sound way over its standart performance as well. To be sincere, I worked with worse live orchestras than East West standart performance on a Midi, even without velocity touches.
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