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!

[Drainland]

Thanks again guys for all your help and special thanks to Xingu for more in-depth responses.

I don't need all the extras of Logic Gold (or platium 6 assuming it has everying gold has - I was going by that comparison list at emagic), but I do need things like compression, being able to record with effects, the various sound enhancers (like exciter etc) and I really think the audio to midi groove template thing sounds like a great idea.

I guess it makes sense to have all the audio files on another drive but I think that would have to come a little in the future for me - because of finances.

Yes I mentioned the backing up as a seperate thing - I'm trying to make sure I have everything covered here.

Thanks Xingu yes - I did know about the interface and the midi box. I was thinking of going for the Motu 828 (been recommend by a dealer) and I think it's the emagic Mt4? for midi (2 ins and 4 outs). Looks like this is going to cost a bit with the iMac and everything! Maybe even more than you guys in the US as things tend to be more expensive in the UK generally (where I am).

So again if anyone can see any pitfalls I'm heading towards - or other comments on the interface or anything else etc, then I'd love to know.

Many thanks again to all you good Mac people!