Multitrack recording and punching in/out are obvious givens for both DAWs, but when you’ve got those clips on the page, Logic affords greater control over them, whether you’re applying natural-sounding pitch correction with the excellent Flex Pitch, or building the perfect vocal take with swipe comping.Īnd, of course, prior to Logic Pro 10.5, Live had a unique and compelling selling point in the ability to record loops in the Session View for non-linear jamming and experimentation. … but now with its own take, Logic wins the audio crown (Image credit: Future)Īs with the MIDI side of things, though, Logic’s long development history and more expansive architecture yield a wider range of audio recording and editing bells and whistles than you’ll find in Live, and if your recording needs are of the more demanding kind – ie, a full band, or even just guitar and vocals – it definitely does the ‘virtual recording studio’ thing rather better. Winner: Logic Pro Audio recording and editing In fact, it’s only been added to over the years with a raft of worthy new MIDI features, the most notable being Logic Pro 10.5’s superb Step Sequencer. Defying the popular assumption that their buying of original Logic developer Emagic in 2002 would lead to a dumbing down, the fruity tech Goliath hasn’t removed a single MIDI-related feature – it’s all still there, from the Environment and Transform module to the Dynamics, Gate Time and ‘Q’ settings in the Inspector.

On the other hand, Apple are to be equally commended for maintaining the formidable complexity for which Logic’s MIDI architecture has always been known. Very rarely do we find ourselves wishing for any specific MIDI editing feature in Live that can’t easily be worked around – with the possible exception of an event list, as being able to filter and alter MIDI data numerically would be hugely useful.

Indeed, Ableton have done a sterling job of keeping this fundamental part of the system free of clutter. … whereas Logic treats users to an increasingly full selection of composition options (Image credit: Future)įor most Live users, however, none of that matters – the MIDI programming paradigm, and the contemporary producer’s technical expectations, have changed a lot since the 90s, and most won’t even be aware of the things that their DAW is ‘missing’.

Logic x pro chart