Midi Routing/effects, Trying out Express for the first time Options

[keybie]

I'm considering Logic Express and have played around with the 30 day demo. I've imported the Garageband demo songs so I can get to know it, and also MIDI files, but without a manual and no prior experience with DAW software I'm stuck and need some help:

1) It seems that you can only use 5 effects per track -is this true?
Someone told me that equalizing/tone controls also counts as effects, so 5 seems very limiting to me.

2) I currently don't have any MIDI interface with my Mac, but thought I'd be able to try out the MIDI capabilities of Logic by having it play Quicktime instruments and/or some sort of soft-synth like Garageband has, but I'm not getting any audio output at all. I assume I have to assign instruments/channels somewhere.
Where/how do I do this?

(I'm on a 1.67GHz PowerBook G4 with MacOS 10.4.9)

This post has been edited by keybie: Mon 9 Apr 2007, 18:20

[Jim Hoyland]

I usually work with Logic Pro so I wasn't sure what instruments were included. You'll get a lot more if you can afford to buy the full version. Glad I was able to get you going though. Some of the sub-groups in the instrument section should be fairly self-explanatory, mono, stereo and multi-channel (Logic can do up to 7.1 if you have a sound card with 8 outputs). The two "AU" sections refer to instruments that are not Logic specific, "A(udio)U(nits)" are Apple's equivalent of VST - sort of. It looks as if you can have up to 32 Audio Instruments so have a play and try out the Garageband instruments too. There are quite a lot of freeware AU instruments and effects out there, I'm sure there are links to these all over this forum.

As far as a rack unit for audio / midi, that's a real can of worms. There's a saying that opinions are like a*******s - everybody's got one, and everybody's got an opinion on this. Where I work we use Digidesign 002s which have 8 audio in and out, 1 midi in and 2 midi outs, but thats because we use ProTools LE which requires a Digi interface. M-Audio make a wide range of not too expensive audio/midi interfaces, some with control surface capability. And then there's MOTU, RME, Presonus, Mackie, Focusrite, Lexicon etc, etc, etc.

If money isn't an issue I'd advise having a look at the Apogee Ensemble for audio and one of the MOTU midi interfaces (the AV Timepiece is really good).

Hopefully you've got a good music store nearby where you can try some of these out. And of course you should take a look at other threads in this forum to see what other people like using.