I would like to introduce myself.

[toneroll]

and re-introduce my self to the wondrfull world of bedroom music production.

Not too long ago I sold all my gear. I had ableton 5, and emu 1616m, some Samson resolv 65a's. Various vsti's including ohmforces' minimonstah. Z3ta, psp nitro. I also had the nord modular g2 rack.... After being completly unimpressed by the g2 I sold it and bought a monomachine.... This also had nowhere near the sound I wanted, so I sold that as well. I ended up with a little dave smith evolver desktop, but also got rid of that simply because I couldn't work off a 2 digit l.e.d.

Anyways the reason for parting with all this stuff was because I was in a bit I a financial bind.

[toneroll]

( I have to post this in segments coz my iPhone keeps crashing before I get to finish the post, sorry)

So.......... I want to get some new gear now that I finally have my head above the water. I know 3 things I am absolutley unequivocally going to get:
1. MacBook pro.( like about 2.2 duo-is)
2. Logic pro ( only $500!!!! Eff me!)
3. (the thing I am MOST excited about) the TI snow.

Now here's my question if anybody can/wants to answer.

Bearing in mind, that I am going to be doing very minimal recording do I really need an external sound card?? I have never had an apple machine before and am assuming that if I did it would be for latency issues etc I really don't know much about core audio etc..... Would the above set up suffice?? (obviously with some monitors)

Any recording that I might do- the odd bit of hardware that my friends have- I imagine could be ran into the snow's ins. I know the snow connects to the MacBook via USB, so I don't think I need to worry to much about a sound card?? Am I wrong? I could just try it all out I suppose. But it would be nice to have the daydreams of my impending gear binge be clearer .

Would love your insight....

Can't wait to be a fully fledged member of the virus community. I already know this beast has what I am looking for.... There was a short period of time when I was in possesion of a powercore compact and had the virus plug in for that. I effin loved it, but of course there was some reason I couldn't keep it. At that time I had a dell (no firwire) and it just wasn't fully compatible with the rest of my stuff.

Thanks in advance for any opinions.....

Toneroll. " I'm dreaming of a WHITE Christmas!!!!!!!!"

[teethofgold]

you should be totally fine with that set up. when I use the TI in DP it works great... so I'm sure that it's even better in Logic.

the sound card functionality works just fine from any app that I've tried. coreaudio and coremidi work fantastic as it is, and the snow seems to be fully compliant.

[toneroll]

Thanks for your input m8.

So how do you rate DP?I don't really know too much about it. I really like the look of logic. It's definatly something I always felt I was missing out on being a PC user. It just looks so polished and complete. I am also very intriuged by sculpture. I have never really had a chance to mess around with component modeling. Also ultrabeat looks pretty comprehensive, and I really like synth'd percussion. Then there is space and delay designer, etc etc.

I would guess ultrabeat could sit quite comfortably next to the snow.... The rest of it I'm not really sure about (not even that sure about that)

Either way, after spending so much time idle, I have realized I was all over the place trying to get to know numerous plug ins, and going for whacky, eclectic hardware choices. This time round I really want to keep it "simple", and only really use 2 or 3 instruments, the snow being one.

Wow I really make these questions drag on don't I?

Cheers. (btw---- the Q. Was; DP or logic IYO)

[teethofgold]

I've never used Logic so I can't say. I've been using DP since version 3... and it works well for me... but note that I don't do beat based music. most of what I do involves recording sounds/processes in max/msp, then mixing them down in DP... so I don't delve too deeply into any of the details.

If you've got your eye set on features in Logic you should probably just go for it!

[toneroll]

I think I will. I'm just not making any hasty decisions this time.

Thx for your time...

[toneroll]

There is one thing I don't think I have considered. Is where my monitors would hook up? With no sound card I either have the 8th inch optical out of the mac (that won't do) or the snow's outs? Would this work? If I remember the specs it has 2 RCA 1/4 inch outs. I would assume audio from logic's main bus could be routed to those?

[teethofgold]

that is correct... the snow acts just as any other audio interface.

one thing I have not been able to find is the real deal on is the audio quality. according to my audio preferences... the only available configuration is 44/16... which is probably fine for playing live... but not so good for recording.

due to this, as well as the fact that max/msp doesn't properly support the virus control vst, I opted to get a focusrite saffire le firewire audio interface in addition to the snow. this is a cheap and portable interface which seems to be working and sounding quite good. I also like that it has good facilities for mixing inputs directly to the output.

BUT!!! note that the new macbooks do not have firewire ports... so you would have to go with a USB audio interface if you want better audio quality (or a macbook pro which does have firewire).

[Timo]

Yep, the Snow's audio inputs are a competent ASIO soundcard, so you wont need another dedicated one. In fact from reading others' posts on here and other places people have been surprised at the quality of the inputs on the Snow/TI.

The only drawback really is that the Snow and the audio inputs are limited to 44.1KHz @ 16-bit when using the USB connection alone. But it shouldn't really be too much of a problem.

Logic... looks great. I would have used Logic myself if it was still available for PC, as the standard plugins in Logic are far superior to Cubase. As I use a PC, I'm getting used to Sonar instead.

Never tried nor know much about DP as I haven't a Mac. The MIDI automation user-interface in DP looked good, merely judging from photos however.

Either way, I think you'll like the TI Snow. Sound quality wise, it's a big step up from soft-synths.