Today I was out in Umeda, doing some Christmas Shopping and was thinking about how I would like to upgrade some certain music softwares. The choices are upgrading to Logic 8 or Kontakt 3. The prices are about the same here in Japan. Both cost about ¥22,000. I’m still not sure which would be the better choice. I am kind of leaning toward the Kontakt 3 upgrade.
What are the benefits of upgrading from Kontakt 1.5 to Kontakt 3? First off, a ton more samples. It comes with so many samples that I don’t even have enough hard drive space for it. The second advantage is that it would seem to be a bit more useful than Logic in the long run. I can use it in all of my sequencers. Just to let you know, I actually use Cubase SX2, ProTools Le 7 and Logic 7. Which seems like a plus because I can always switch platform and still be able to have the sampler work, instead of the way it is now. If I am doing something in Cubase SX2 which is running under Windows and make a sample for a song that would go better with another song that I am working on in Logic, I can just switch over to logic and load up the sampler instead of having to deal with importing or recreating the sample in the EXS24 editor or slap it in to that free ProTools sampler called Structure. Which I have yet to use so I don’t know how easy or difficult it would be. The third reason to upgrade would be that I could use Kontakt on my Mac finally, and utilize all those samples I made using Kontakt in the past. The fourth and last reason is, It’s version 3 vs 1.5. Lots has changed. If you are wondering why I didn’t get Kontakt 2, the reason is, I just never got around to it. When I finally started to really consider upgrading, version 3 came out.
Now here is the reasons to upgrade to Logic Studio. First new workflow enhancements. Although I was not to impressed with the whole everything available in one screen when I saw the Sonar 7 demonstration, I think the Apple idea of it using tabs seems much better. The reason why I didn’t care much for it in Sonar was, when I was I watching the demonstration the guy was constantly resizing the little window area in the arrange window. Second reason for upgrading Logic is…. it has all that stuff. How can you go wrong with all those things included. I don’t know if soundtrack is really useful, but I’m sure I can find someway to use it. The soundstage app, looks interesting, but not too useful because I don’t play live. Waveburner?? Well I got that already in L7. The third reason is that I can dump the dongle. Recently I have been feeling that dongles are kind of a drag. After using them for about 3 years, only now it seems to me to be that way. The reason is that my situation has changed with the way I write music. Since I don’t have a studio I am writing at a couple of different places and sometimes I want to write in my spare time between jobs while I am out. Because of this, the fear of losing or breaking my dongle is real and kind of scary.
Those are my reasons for wanting to upgrade. Although upgrading Logic seems good, I can always do that later. The same could be said about Kontakt too, but I think I would like to be able to use Kontakt again. I do miss it. I’m not that big of a fan of the EXS24 sampler in Logic. It’s a good sampler and all, but I always liked Kontakt and it’s features.
