In the early years I tried out Logic (before Apple acquired it), Cubase, Reason (and a little Cakewalk). While I thought Logic was really illogic, and Cubase was a bit too advanved for me (at that point), I stumbled upon Reason, and it was really a match for me. But I lost interest in music production for a while, until 2009-2010.
In 2010 I saw a video of a DAW I had never heard of before, Studio One. It seemed to be very simple and straight forward, and the workflow really got me. You could just drag and drop the plugins (both instruments and effects) into the track, and you were ready to go. You didn't have to dig into menus with several steps. I purchased Studio One minutes after watching that video.
Between 2010 and 2025 I have spent 10, 20, 30k USD (I don't know exactly, maybe it's even more?) on music software, and own licenses for around 800-1000 plugins, and multiple DAW's (Studio One, Reason, Bitwig, Reaper, Waveform, Renoise (for nostalgic reasons), Logic and FL Studio (don't ask me why, from a workflow view it's the worst ever
), maybe I have even forgotten one or two . But Studio One has always been my no.1, mostly because of its workflow. Bitwig and Reason has got some love from me, since they are fun and experimental (to me). In November last year I bought my first Mac (Mini M4 Pro). Actually it was my second Mac, I owned Macbook Pro back in 2015, which I sold after a year because I hated it. And about 7 years ago I got a new job on which I was handed a Macbook Pro. I didn't like it, the OS workflow comparing to Windows was not in my taste, at all. I even asked for a Windows computer when I switched last year to get away from MacOS. The reason why I bought the Mac Mini last year was because I was to lazy re-assemble my Windows computer, and I though I could use the Mac meanwhile I overcame this laziness and procrastination issue.
With the Mac Mini I also bought a Logic Pro license. It has been installed since day one, but I didn't use it, even though my intention was to try it out. Until last weekend. I booted it up, tried a few things that I really like about Studio One, to find out it initially still was a but more cumbersome. For example how you need to route the MIDI signal out of Logic and back in to be able to render MIDI into a track from a MIDI-FX (unless you are playing live). And of course, when "combining" (layering) two or more instruments you can't add a MIDI-FX on the Summing Track. This is possible, easily, with both Studio One and Reason, as well as Bitwig.
Anyway, I gave it a couple of more hours and found out some things on the more positive side. For instance, all stock plugins are re-scalable, which none of the Studio One or the Cubase stock plugins are (shame). Sure, the "legacy" stock plugins in Logic could use a makeover, but they are in fact re-scalable. Digging deeper I also noticed the library you receive with Logic is HUGE, and there's a LOT of great stuff in there. I think Reason has some great stuff, but Studio One and Cubase are not even close.
From an "out-of-the-box" experience (stock plugins and library) Logic is exceptional comparing to Studio One and Cubase. And Alchemy, who even need Omnisphere when you have Alchemy? Too bad I can't use it outside Logic.
Even though I still love the workflow in Studio One, I'm not really fond of the development pace (and who needs the new sampled instruments they are including with new releases?). On my Mac Studio One is also quite unstable, it crashes a lot for me. Does it not run the plugins in a sandbox?
I don't know if Logic will ever be my no.1, maybe Studio One will still be my no.1, but I kind of fell in love with Logic this weekend, and I will definitely use it more. And when Bitwig 6 is released, I will activate my "12 month subscription" license I purchased during the winter sale this year. I do like the modulation capabilities in Bitwig, which Studio One completely lack, and Cubase now have (to some degree). I don't know if Logic has anything of this yet, but I'll find out.
And the best of all, like FL Studio, Logic Pro seems to have free updates for life.
Well...thank you for reading, if you even managed to get this far
