Metro vs. Garage band

[malan]

O.k...I think you guys at Sagan have done a great job of brining a product that would have been dead back from the brink based on this website. I want to give you guys a chance to make your case on why I should upgrade to Metro 6 from Metro 5 instead of using Garage band...the new application from Apple.

So make your case!

-Mike

[Sami23]

"...instead of using Garage band...the new application from Apple."

Kinda hard to compare a product that hasn't even shipped yet.... LOL!

Loop based apps have their usages at times... let's wait until a few of us pay 49 bucks to compare "features" and usage...

[sseaton]

To Anyone Interested:

I am going to get Garageband simply because it is part of the iLife '04 suite of apps. I am a technology teacher and use iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, and iTunes with my students and other teachers in my district all the time, so what the heck.

I will be glad to give feedback about this application, but I don't want to use this forum for the wrong purposes. I have seen discussions already on other web sites for and against Garageband... which I agree is silly. As far as I know, only folks at Macworld and people visiting Apple Stores have actually seen the app. Anyway, those other sites have many posts about Garageband, but the dialogue generally deteriorates into snippy comments and bashing of other users and their favorite apps. We have such a great community of Metro users here, and I would hate to see this happen. I'm sure it won't.

With that said, here is my two cents:

1. Garageband doesn't seem to support simultaneous audio recording on more than one or two tracks.

2. Others have reported that Garageband will not support 3rd party software instruments... even though AUs are apparently supported. I'm guessing that means effects/EQs, etc. will be supported only.

3. Garageband doesn't seem to use a traditional mixer interface for mixing tracks and automation.

4. You must have a 600 Mhz G4 to run software instruments.

5. A DVD drive is required for installation of Garageband.

So for the average Joe in his room, and even for some semi-professionals, Garageband might do the trick. For others, however, it will probably be very limited.

I see Garageband as being an ice-breaker audio/MIDI app for amateur and budding musicians... and even for veteran musicians and composers who have been intimidated about using technology. I also see a whole wave of the above mentioned folks getting to the point where Garageband simply won't meet their needs. This, I think, will increase the demand for programs like Metro. I think it will also foster innovation and make the Mac platform the leader in digital audio music production. I am actually glad to see Apple so committed to audio... it seems like they have really dropped the ball in the past.

I hope this helps. If this post is not appropriate in this forum, please feel free to delete it.

Sean

[kaboombahchuck]

I'll be getting Garage band for the instruments, which are supposed to be sampled (not sure what format), and are reported to be very good. The folks at the Apple store near my house said that other midi sequencers "should" be able to trigger the instruments. Also the use of the loop sequencer is gettin to be a must have for me. It will be nice to build a song rapidly before I forget what it is I'm doing, and have a nice rough draft for the real work that will be done in Metro. I guess I'll know on Friday when I get it. Anyway for $49 it will be a pretty cool toy to have.

[Jerm]

This is all good feedback. I would like to hear more after you guys use Garage Band for awhile. Thanks.

[Scoot]

Below was an article posted by someone at www.osxaudio.com.
This will add a little to Sean's message.
I will post MY opinion in the next message.

****************************

First experience w/ GarageBand

Not sure if anyone addressed this already but in case anyone is curious.

Just got back from MacWorld and checked out GB while I didn't spend too much time on it, I thought I'd pass on my initial thoughts.

It's a cool app but there are serious limitations.

The included softsynths are actually quite useable - especially the acoustic guitars.
There really isn't much of a midi editor though. There are no tools like scissiors or a pencil to manually draw in midi notes. Notes also stick to a grid and I had a heck of a time dragging midi notes on top of each other to create a chord.
Mind you, at MWSF there are no MAudio keyboards hooked up to any of the demo Macs. I had to hit record and manually point the mouse over the virtual keyboard and play notes one at a time. My hope was to then rag them over one another to hear chords.
I couldn't do it in GB.

To the left of the TRansport buttons: 'eye', scissors, Info, and Plus icons that are not tools, they just open up the editor (appears below the Arrange window ala Reason) or gives you access to the included loop library.

The loops are fun to play with but you have to select the key (C, E#, F) ahead of time or else the default vaule is C. Once oyu play the loops, I couldn't find a way to change the pitch.

Once you create a session with some loops and a few synths, the only export choice you have is to iTunes. You cannot export as a general midi file to say, use in Logic later. You cannot bounce out raw audio files. They must be exported into iTunes, the exported out of iTunes to be used.
There also is no Import function. As I tried to import an iTunes MP3 as a loop to see if any audio would 'stretch'. I couldn't find a way to do it.

I didn't see any effects either. Just the Guitar Simulator. There's a menu called EFFECTS, but all that was in there was the GuitarAmps (I think only 6).
So it appears you can only track some really dry vocals.

And I didn't see any bit/sample rate options so I'm not sure that if I tested GB on a G5 with the built in SPDIF, I may have had more options.

Again I only spent maybe 10 minutes on it and with no manual and on a 20" iMac with no SPDIF.

So, it seems like it's a good sketch pad but the fact you can't export into something else makes it quite limited. I think with more time on a machine, there's probably a way to do that, doncha think?

[Scoot]

The only event that will allow me to play with garageband is buying a new mac and that isn't happening anytime soon.
I am not going to fork out money for something that I don't need.

It has some nice features like the samples/loops and the way you can use them but the features I need are missing.
(Speaking of the loops - let's hope this doesn't create a whole lot of number one hits that only Mac users know where they came from. )


I also believe you get what you pay for.

I could use Apple's "preview" to save pictures, but since I need something better I've got photoshop.

I also have a website and manage it with golive, sticking pictures into things called folders near the parent html pages.
Due to this method of sorting pictures into logical folders I have never needed to use iphoto!
In fact if I look at iLife, I only use itunes on occasion and prefer not to fill my hard disk with mp3's but rather stick a CD in the drive and play it through.......boy......a really old concept!
(The itunes music store is unavailable to me at present for buying).

I see the iLife as a stepping block onto better things.
If you're already mixing and editing and a bit of a guru on your mac, you don't want to go backward.......though these items and products are great to encourage newbies into having a go and I think that's what they're intended for.

I could easily see a new user picking up and running with garageband and then going out and looking at buying a better pro app in the future.
In schools, it would sure be more exciting than banging on a toy drum or playing a recorder to get kids involved in music.


scoot.

[malan]

That is good feedback so far but I guess I was looking for a list of things that Metro 6 has and Garageband doesn't. I also was looking for an explanation/discussion as to why Apple would require a 600 MHz G3 for basic functionality and a G4 for the software instruments where it seems that Metro 6 with some plugins could work on a lesser machine with OS X?. I understand optimizing code for altivec but when altivec isn't there shouldn't the thing still work albeit a little slower?

I was on another forum yesterday where someone told me that the pkg installer for soundtrack would detect the clock speed of the computer and then decide if it could be installed or not. Someone hacked it to allow it to run on their older G3. The software was installed but ran very slowly. It seems to me that maybe Apple is making this code a bit bloated just to get people to upgrade the machine. I've been recording with Metro 5 for 4.5 years and it has worked great.

[braj]

I can see Garageband being good for guitar practice when you just want to play over a decent groove and don't have time to make something yourself. For that it sounds really great. But no Midi import/export and the other limitations mean it will likely just be a cool practice tool. The UI looks very nice though, very simple, which is good.

[lesag002]

I'll definitely be using GB for the shear simplicity of it. My time to play/record music is so limited now that I have two kids that I don't want to have to spend time composing backing material. For that reason, the looping capabilities in GB will be a godsend!!! Let's face it, I can barely play guitar, let alone a drum machine or keyboard! A simple, nice sounding sketchpad type app is exactly what I've been looking for. Metro is much more complicated and will have to be reserved for only serious composing. But, I haven't even tried GB yet, so who knows...

[Scoot]

I understand optimizing code for altivec but when altivec isn't there shouldn't the thing still work albeit a little slower?

I can think of one place where such things don't work.

Absynth can let you hear a generated sound and gives you an indication of the CPU required to make that sound.......based on it's component parts and their complexity.

If the requirements on the CPU are greater than the power you have in your machine, the sound you hear breaks up (as it plays just bits of the sound as it is processing and producing it) and can be painful to a sensitive ear. The solution is to cut down the complexity of the sound and therefore you may lose the sound you were looking for in the first place.

Perhaps GB has high sampled sounds that are also very complex which need decent throughput to make them sound right........but with no control to reduce their complexity. This would make them useless on a computer without enough CPU power, bus and disk speed etc.


scoot.

[malan]

"If the requirements on the CPU are greater than the power you have in your machine, the sound you hear breaks up (as it plays just bits of the sound as it is processing and producing it) and can be painful to a sensitive ear. The solution is to cut down the complexity of the sound and therefore you may lose the sound you were looking for in the first place. "

This is a good point. I understood that those sampled sounds from Garage band may not be accessible to me because of processor speed but I would like to try just recording my guitar into the software with low latency. I can do that now with my machine. I lay down chords and then I'll play a solo on top of that with the audio from the track I'm recording played through the system (that's how low the latency is). Sometimes I do this just to practice my improvisation skills.

My simple point is that if I can do that now with an older product in OS 9 I should be able to do that with a newer product in OS X without any artificial barrier to jump over like the pkg installer finding my processor speed and saying...nope can't install. But maybe I can't do this simple thing with garage band because of the interface overhead that eats up the processor. If that is the case then that disturbs me because that is also a type of artificial restraint on the machine.

[Scoot]

Originally OSX was way slower than OS9......I think the difference between the two is now a lot less.

I wouldn't call it an artificial restraint......you simply may not have the power in the same way a slow machine can't render 3D graphics in realtime. Once the interface is up on screen, how much 'work' is required to keep it there? In metro having tracks set to record and leaving reverbs active when not in use are drains on the system.

In the audio world the way around such a problem (lack of CPU horsepower) was to process the audio offline or not in realtime. You could run an audiosuite plugin over your track, wait and then end up with a processed track........similar to applying a filter in photoshop.

This kind of treatment is completely useless when working with instruments cause you want them to respond and you hit keys or bash pads.


You may find that some of the sounds will work......and maybe the CPU requirement stated, may be the minimum to use all the instruments available in GB.........you can find out in a couple of days at your local mac store the correct answer.


scoot.

[fastlanephil]

Metro 6 LX vs Logic Express. A smart move!

I learned a few weeks ago that karaoke is done on laptops now and there isn't any software on the Mac side. I was imagining Steve Jobs doing a demo of Apple's iKaraoke to 'Feelings' and out stepped Bill Gates and they did a duo as the crowd went wild with very mixed emotions. And then i'm watching the keynote live and there was GarageBand. Really!