It is a daunting task to review anything as comprehensive as the Logic Studio 8 suite. I am not going to even try to sum up all it can do, because you can read about that on the Apple website. I'd just like to point out what I think is great, or not so great, about it.

Without a doubt to me Logics' strong point is the built-in instruments and effects:

First the instruments: they cover many synthesis techniques: Virtual Analog, Physical Modeling, FM, Sampling and Drum synthsesis. I like the inclusion of some very simple synths for specific tasks like mono bass, or analog strings. There are also emulations of the Rhodes Piano, Hammand Organ and Hohner Clavinet. These are simple to work with and sound very convincing. These instruments all sound very good and are easy on the CPU, compared to my favorite instruments from Native Instruments. If you want to make some synthesizer music and you want to work entirely computer-based Logic is a hard to beat package.

The many built-in effects cover all the basics like EQ, Reverb, Compression and Delay. There's also a whole bunch of modulation FX and some are pretty weird. The same applies here: they sound good and don't burden the CPU too much.

You can work almost entirely from the arangement view, where everything is laid out in well organised panels, much like in Ableton Live. If you want to, you can create your own screen sets and navigate super-fast to different views to do some detailed editing.

I love that you can save channels with instruments and effects as presets. If you work loop based you can save your Loops as Apple Loops and have all settings stored within them as well. This makes it very easy to build a complete track by dropping loops in the arrangement-view. Don't htink you can DJ with it like with Ableton Live, though.

Recording automation via midi is something that keeps giving me a headache. Midi-data and automation are two separate things in Logic and are handled differently. I advise you to test this yourself before you buy Logic. Drawing automation on the arrangement tracks is very easy, though.

Logic only handles AU plug-ins. It seems to be impossible to send midi from a plug-in to another track or plug-in. You'll have to use a workaround via virtual midi ports.

Setting up external hardware with Logic is a complicated proces, but when you've got it figured out you can use your hardware synth just like a plug-in on a software instrument track. Ofcourse you need a multi input audio interface for this to work. I use a NordLead2 and motu828 this way, and it works great. The only way to store the patches of your hardware is by recording a sysex dump on a track. There's no sysex bankmanager in Logic.

Logic has something they call the environment where things like routing are handled. Here you find objects that represent your channels, inputs and outputs, hardware instruments, and tools that filters/modify data. It's very complicated and not very well documented. It's also very powerfull, but in my opinion it needs a major overhaul.

Logic Studio is backwards compatible with Express and Garageband. This makes a Mac (coming with Garageband) a perfect starting point for anyone who wants to try making music on the computer. In my opinion Logic is a bargain if you take the amount and the quality of the built-in instruments and effects in account. On top of that Logic comes with wave-editing, cd-burning and some other usefull tools.