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Recommendations for Mac Recording/Mixing Software

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Topic Recommendations for Mac Recording/Mixing Software
I am a Mac user (a recent convert) who uses the computer mainly for editing video with Final Cut Pro 5. I’m also a musician who, prior to converting to Mac, happily used Sonar 4 Studio for recording and mixing music. I have enjoyed playing around with Garage Band 3, but I can already feel its limitations. I am not that interested in MIDI sequencing. I am mostly interested in recording acoustic and electric instruments (real audio) with a multitrack recording program. I do like the idea of being able to use instrument samples and maybe even percussion loops to supplement the instruments I actually know how to play. I probably don’t need to be able to record more than 4 tracks at a time, since I’m mostly recording alone at this point, and how many instruments can I really play at once?!

Given these considerations, what is the best software recording/mixing/mastering program I can get for the Mac? I’ve played around with Cubase LE, which came with my audio interface, the Presonus Firebox, and I liked the interface, but I can tell this version is pretty limited in what it can do. I’ve looked at Logic Express, since it’s an Apple product, and I figured it would interface nicely with other Apple programs, should that prove desirable, but it seems to be made mainly for MIDI lovers, and the interface is pretty SCARY.

If I went with Cubase, what would be the main considerations in choosing among SX3, SE3 and SL3?

Keeping in mind that I’m not an engineer, but a musician who is willing to learn the basics, what are my options for a program that’s made more for actual audio than MIDI, but which has some basic capacity for MIDI should I want to play with that later? (If Sonar worked on a Mac, I’d probably go with that.)

My system: Power Mac G5 Quad w/4gb RAM. Presonus Firebox. Mackie 8-channel mixer.

Thanks a lot!

Paul S.
2
Cubase, I find, is great for anything that is real audio. The MIDI functions are a bit hard to understand. I learned them with Logic Express much more easily. Also, Logic Ex intergrates much better with the mac, and has more options than cubase le. I've never used Cubase SX. So my reccomendation for someone into audio recording would be Cubase.

Goodluck