Today I finally got around to picking up the Logic Studio Upgrade. It was a pretty good deal. I got it at Yodobashi Camera in Umeda. After using my point card, it came out to be about $28. That’s right $28. I had about $200 worth of points on my card.
First impression: That bad boy is heavy. Really, the box is heavy. It has 5 manuals in it and 8 discs. It weighs about as much as one of my Yamaha HSM50 monitors. I often thought about going with Logic Express 8 instead, but realized that if I got that and then felt the need to upgrade it would cost me more than actually purchasing the upgrade. If I did it that way the price would be Logic 8 express upgrade price + Logic studio upgrade price = about $100 more. Another reason why I considered the express version is that I was not convinced (and still not) that I really needed all the extra things that come with it. Off hand I can say that MainStage is pretty useless at this point in time. I guess I can use it if I decide to write music out on paper. However I could just open up Kontakt and a piano sample and get the same. As for all the additional Apple loops and jam packs, well I don’t think it could ever hurt to have that many extra samples available. With the addition of this new content, I know have more samples than I can shake a stick at.
The installation process was pretty painless. It asked me for the usual things, name serial number, etc.. After that, came a the tough part. I had to choose what not to install. I don’t have enough disk space for all of the extra content. I’ll have to see if I can install it on one of my external hard disks. I skipped all the jam packs, loops and surround sound impulses. In short I just installed the programs.
After the install which took some time about 15 minutes I fired up Logic. First thing it does is do the Audio Unit validation. It was so much faster than the Logic Pro 7 au validator. What made it fast was that it would do 2 at a time. After doing a quick check to make sure it works, I closed it and fired up Logic Pro 7 to make sure that it was still working properly and loaded up the current track that I’m working on. After reading about some horror stories about loading Logic 7 tracks in Logic 8, I decided that I’m just going to finish up my Logic 7 songs in Logic and just start fresh in Logic 8. So be on the look out for some tips on Logic 8. I plan on documenting my adventures in Logic 8 land.
After being sure that all was cool, it was time to run the Apple updater and update Logic. That went smooth. The only thing that confused me a little was that it listed the Logic 8.01 and 8.02 updates. It made me wonder if I had to do the 8.01 before the 8.02. I figured that I didn’t need to, and if I did it would tell me when I try to install the 8.02 update. I remember that for some updates to Cubase SX 2 I actually had to install certain previous updates for it to work.
After updating, I opened up everything to make sure it all opens up nicely and no errors. Everything went well. It all works as far as I know. Maybe sometime this week I’ll start a new track in Logic Studio. Next thing I plan to do is see how I can install the additional content to another drive and to setup a new default template or 2 for Logic.