Pro Tools vs Logic 7 for Audio Editing

I have been thinking of jumping ship from Pro Tools LE to Logic. I'm a composer and am familiar with all the goodies Logic offers via VI's and midi, but I spend an awful lot of time recording guitars and vocals.

In Pro Tools, I clean up tracks really fast. Click in the front of a region, press the "a" key and everything to the left of the cursor is gone. Click at the end of the region, hit the "s" key, gone again. Stuff like that.

I have been excited about Logic 7+ since reading about it, but the more I dig around in forums and elsewhere on the net, the more I keep coming up with reviews and posts by people saying "Yeah, if you're doing a lot of audio editing, stay with Pro Tools...etc." This is discouraging. I am wondering if Apple is just having a rough time catching up and fixing all the ills EMAGIC created, or if they even realize how important it is to work really fast in a production environment. Face it, most posts are not about how quick and easy it is to trim, clean, etc, audio in Logic....it's usually someone raving about EXS or folder packing, etc. What worries me about Logic is the nuts and bolts daily drugery which PT handles really, really fast and effortlessly.

That said, I don't have 10 grand to get an HD system. I need more tracks than 32. So that has sent me searching. I have DP, which I've messed around with this week a bit, but I find it frustrating in many ways, despite having grown up in the 80s with Performer. With even one VI my G5 Dual 2G shows more processor load than the same VI in Pro Tools LE doing the same thing. Not good. And I just can't seem to get a handle on this whole "pop editing" thing DP has going for audio files. Geez, can't we just click on the waveform and start editing?

I do like the arrange window in Logic, and years ago used Logic for midi sequencing, which I thought it did well, and it sounded tight.

If someone can perhaps offer some input on strictly the audio editing aspects of the latest Logic, and whether perhaps you guys see it evolving for the better, it would be appreciated.

Thanks for any input.

Tom H

I think a lot of PT users miss having their specific way of editing quickly, which is why Logic gets a bad rap for editing. But the new Pro 7 features are quite interesting and have a couple of my PT friends rather jealous actually.

#1 is the ability to drag in the front and back of any region by click-dragging on the lower corner. You can select multiple regions and stretch or squeeze the length at the front or back this way. I find it super handy.

Also if you have your zoom tool set up as a right mouse click, you can drag select a portion of any region or group of regions and zoom to fit the screen.

I've been playing lately with a tip someone posted on here, when dealing with overlapped regions (which has always been a pain before). If you have both the arrange and audio window open, you can select a region in the audio window (which is just a list of all regions recorded into the session) and it will automatically be selected and pushed to the front of any overlapped regions. This is helping a lot as dealing with finding a specific take in a pile of 6 takes has always been a pain in the ass. But this tip makes it easy. I've got a screenset set up now for this purpose whenevere I want to go into editing mode I just press 3 and get the windows side by side.

A new tip that has helped me as well, is having the scissor tool set up on the mouse wheel button. Now I don't have to go over to the toolbox and the zoom boxes back and forth when editing. Just setting up those two things has saved me a lot of time. Now I just have to get over the habit of doing things the long way........