Help Needed Over Whether To Get Cubase/logic, logic illogical? Cubase badly written? Options

[Drainland]

Hi,

I'm just about to get an iMac g4 800mhz for making music. Up until now I"ve been using an atari 1040ST and Cubase for pure sequencing and syncing vox etc from multitrack.

It's looking to me like Cubase / Logic are the main choices and although my instinct is to go with Cubase, as I've used it for years on the ST, I'm put off by a lot of the comments I've been reading about running it on OSX. Logic sounds really good, however I'm reading a lot about how difficult it can be to use. A lot of people are saying Cubase is a lot more intuitive and "fun". I think I read somewhere that Logic started life as "notator" on the ST and I could not get my head around that at all - so I opted for Cubase.

So I'm really not sure what to do. I want something that works well on the Mac platform - but something that's easy to use.

This is for a bedroom set up. Few hardware synths, sampler, bunch of outboard. I need decent audio and midi abilities.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

[rickenbacker]

Pretty comprehensive answer from xingu, there - good work, fella!

I'll just add that I run both Cubase SX and Logic 5.5 and generally prefer SX. I just like the way it works for me and never seems to trip me up or get in my way when recording, if you know what I mean.

I've also got a lot of OS X VSTis and FX, so SX is the only one that I can use them in. Sure, the companies might come out with AU versions sooner or later, but today and tomorrow I'll be using them in SX.

SX does seem to be taking a beating in some forums, but I'm slightly suspicious that it's just a handy whipping boy. It's never crapped out on me in any serious way... so far. Anyway, Logic has given me enough headaches over recent months, so she ain't so saint either!

Tough call, but they both do the same thing. Go with what you like best.