Whats the diff between express and pro??

Question

Just wondering what the main diff between the two are. I've used pro at school, but cant afford to get it at home. Will i still be able to use the same audio instruments like the same synths and plug ins??? Also, would i be able to run the program on a mac mini (top of the line)?

Answer 1

Matt Mac 63, "Whats the diff between express and pro??" #5, 10:33pm Oct 18, 2005 CDT
All I was saying is that if a person can afford to get Pro, they definitely should. The difference in features adds up to at least the difference in price, if not very much more.
Having said that, Express is good value compared to most other DAW software at that pricepoint, but it is only intended as a 'Lite' version.
Some examples, off the top of my head, of differences not made really clear in the comparison list.
Input Objects:
In Pro you can use Input Objects to monitor incoming signal without rec-enabling a track. That doesn't sound much, on the face of it, but what it means is you can use external FX units (hardware) as inserts in tracks (or busses) just like plugins, and bounce them with the mix. it also means you acn monitor what you are playing into Logic Pro with plugin FX applied, but record dry so you can hear your guitar with the reverb, or whatever, but still have the recorded dry signal so you can change the FX settings later.
Pro has some very handy environment objects. The main one being the Trabsformer object. But also another extremely useful object is TouchTracks.
If you've ever played with Ableton Live you would have noticed you can triger clips with the keyboard in all different ways (loop, gate loop, one shot etc.) Well TouchTracks does that with MIDI regions.(I have a feeling that feature in Live was modeled after Logic's TouchTracks' as it is incredibly similar.)
They are only a few examples of a whole range of differences. If all the differences were itemized in the 'comparison chart' it would be about 3 pages long.
All I am saying is, don't take the comparison chart as the definitive list of differences.
yes, Express is a good basic tool and you can do a lot with it, with some imagination.
The SOS author's claim that:
you're paying less than a third of the price of Logic Pro and getting over 90 percent of the functionality."
is not true in totality.
It may be true to someone who has never dabbled in audio software before, because it takes literally years to become fully conversant with every function in Logic Pro, and no-one uses absolutely everything.
But for serious users, who have big demands, in my opinion, Express is less than 30% of Pro's functionality.