Logic Express is a powerful recording interface in it's own right, but with the affordable Apple Logic Studio 8 upgrade, you'll be taking your game from the minor leagues to the big show. What's so great about Logic 8 Studio? Why can you not live without it? Read on to find out what's new, what's been improved, and why you wouldn't want to pass up this great offer.

With Logic 8 Studio, Apple has married the Logic Pro 8, MainStage, and Soundtrack Pro 2 toolkits with three ample plug-in sets, Studio Instruments, Studio Effects, and Studio Sound Library, giving you an amazing amount of opportunity in one convenient package. Six for the price of one? You can't beat that, especially when you know what they're all capable of doing.

Logic Pro 8 A next generation, single-window design and simplified interface is just the beginning. Logic Pro 8 offers a region-based take management system for smother multi-track recording, editing, and processing. It's also equipped with new precision audio editing and automation tools, optimized mixer views, a plethora of compatibility choices, realtime notation, soundtrack synchronicity assistance, surround production, more mobility options than before. If that sounds like a lot, it's just the tip of the iceberg of what this powerful toolkit can do for you in terms of collecting your rough ideas and reshaping them into polished gems.

MainStage As we continue to move through the digital age, it's more and more common to see a laptop on-stage as much as it was to see a quartet thrashing about in the 80's. You can still bang your head, keyboard, guitar, or drum pads, but MainStage makes managing plug-ins and switching performance functions headache free with an intuitive hardware controller learning system and full-screen tuning to ensure fluid live shows. Utilize professionally designed instrument templates, or customize them to your preferences. The high-resolution graphics on the highly modifiable interface are easy-to-read in long distance and low-light situations, so before you take the stage, see how MainStage can make you a better live performer.

Soundtrack Pro 2 Have you ever been moved by a piece of music playing along to some video, or in a special part of a movie and said to yourself, "I want to do that!" Soundtrack Pro 2 will help you on your journey to becoming the next John Williams with a streamlined multitrack interface; advanced audio editing and dialogue tools; and time-saving stereo and surround mixing controls. You'll also get seamless compatibility with popular audio and video applications like Final Cut Pro. Soundtrack Pro 2's extensive library of royalty-free sound effects and music beds can provide you with the right aural nuance to complete your soundtrack. You can also easily add third party sound libraries, or use compressors, delays, and reverbs to reshape existing sounds into your original concepts.

Studio Instruments This collection includes 40 instrument plug-ins to play around with. Ultrabeat has more than 50 new drum kits, 400 new patterns, and more than 1000 new sounds. Synths features six different synths, each with their own characteristics, from the classic analog style to an 8-voice polyphonic type for more ensemble-like parts. The EXS24 Sampler and Sculpture are two plug-ins that allows you to tinker around, creating unique sounds. Vintage Instruments offers authentic simulations of a Hammond B3, Hohner Clavinet D6 and several Fender Rhodes and Wurlitzer pianos.

Studio Effects It's tricky to rock around with the 80 effect plug-ins included in Apple's Studio Effects. Space Designer is a convolution reverb that gives you a library of more than 900 impulse responses so you can make it sound like you've recorded in as diverse environments as a rustic kitchen or Allianz Stadium. Guitar Amp Pro offers an array of legendary amp models, cabinets, microphone controls, and effects for building guitar tone, as well as nine different amplifier models, frequency, and gain controls for electric bass sounds. You can also use it to create your own amp and speaker combos or use it to manipulate synth lines. The Delay Designer is multi-tap delay plug-in with True Surround processing to give each tap it's own pan position in the surround field. Other plug-ins you'll find useful and fun are the synthesized reverbs; modulation options; EQs; Surround Compressor; vintage, warped, and voice processing; as well as mastering tools to complement it all.

Studio Sound Library The Studio Sound Library is a numbers game. You get five Jam Pack collections, including World Music, Symphony Orchestra, Rhythm Section, Remix Tools (geared toward the hip-hop, techno, trance and R&B types), and Jam Pack 1 (a general variety of percussion, string, and synth instruments). To add to that, you'll have 18,000 royalty-free Apple Loops, 1,300 EXS instruments, and more than 1,000 multichannel sound effects and music beds. As if that weren't enough, there's 2,400 professionally designed strip settings and 600 surround channel strip settings to work within. To sum it all up, that's an enormous sound playground to have fun in.

Apple Logic Studio 8 Upgrade From Logic Express Specifications:

• Minimum requirements to install all applications
• Mac computer with a 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor (PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo, or Intel Xeon processor highly recommended)
• 1GB of RAM (2GB or more highly recommended)
• Display with 1024 x 768 resolution (1280 x 800 or higher recommended)
• Mac OS X v10.4.9 or later
• QuickTime 7.2 or later
• DVD drive for installation
• PCI Express, ExpressCard/34, USB, or FireWire based audio interface recommended
  
  Surround requirements for Logic Pro and Soundtrack Pro
• Mac computer with dual PowerPC G5 processors or an Intel Core Duo or Xeon processor
• Multichannel audio interface
  
  Available disk space requirements
• 7GB to install all applications and required content
• Additional 39GB to install all optional content (large content packages can be installed on separate disk):
• 10GB for Jam Pack collections
• 16GB for sound effects
• 6GB for surround music beds
• 7GB for other optional content

Apple Logic Studio 8 Upgrade From Logic Express Features:

• Includes:
• Logic Pro 8
• MainStage
• Soundtrack Pro 2
• Studio Instruments
• Studio Effects
• Studio Sound Library
  
  Logic Pro 8 Compatibility
• GarageBand and Logic Express, Reason, Live, Pro Tools, Final Cut Pro, and more
• Support for Apple Core Audio and Digidesign DAE hardware
• TDM and Audio Units allows for plenty of plug-ins
• AAF, OMF, and XML support
  
  Soundtrack Pro 2 Compatibility
• OMF, AAF import/export, XML
• Final Cut Pro

Your music is pro, why shouldn't your software be too? Order now.