Customer Reviews

Music Studio G7 Deluxe

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I started with the 5.0 version, & was instantly blown away. With 7.0, very little is beyond the professional, & the beginner will be (briefly) overwhelmed.

The GUI is what Computer Music Magazine (Britain) calls, "Logic-alike". You can't play around under the hood as with eMagic products, but I doubt 99% of users would ever notice. Now that Logic is Mac-only, this is the place to be for PCs.

The name is misleading, as this is actually two separable products, the Audio Studio & the MIDI Studio. Unless you're working in audio-only multitrack, you'll probably do all of your work in the MIDI Studio -- trust me when I say the Audio Studio is fascinating, & will result in many happy hours of getting no productive work done, so steer wide of it.

Other than that, I'll just say that this comes with a whole rack of impressive virtual instruments (including "analogue" bass, drums, & a very good piano sim), handles DX & VST plug-ins, carries more than enough effects & processing gizmos to get you off to a great start, & has some of the best waveform editing I've ever handled. You can change colors of the interfaces freely, to make it easier for those long mix sessions. Almost every toolbar & view can be "floated" so you can shape it & put it where it works best for you. The MIDI editor is a touch clunky, which makes it better than that in a few packages that cost 10 times as much.

MAGIX products consistely get a "10 of 10" rating from CM (the only publication I read on the subject), something they rarely dole out more than two or three times a year. Let's just say that MAGIX gets more than half of them, & MS7d is one.

The paper manual is on the skinny side, but a decent introduction if much of the concepts are new to you. The full (roughly 500-page) manual is on the CD. Better, though, is to follow the Tutorial, & then let the Wizard walk you through your first projects -- yes, you can build a decent basic tune by choosing someparameters from the menus! And let's not forget that the deLuxe version includes more than 3,000 samples & MIDI loops to get you started.

Word of warning: you don't absolutely *NEED* 256 megabytes of memory, but you'll be thankful for it...!

[later note: while I sympathize with the other reviewers who've had problems with this package, all I can say is -- seriously! -- don't get a Jaguar if what you really want is a Chevy. Unless you buy the barrel-bottom Magix wares, you're going to be utterly overwhelmed with options. The learning curve is ridiculously high. However, those who persist will find that they're laying down major parts of rough tracks with only a few presses of your customized macro keys. Plus, Magix manuals do truly suck -- many screen-shots are in German, for instance -- and the indexing is some of the worst imaginable. And I have a talent for coming up with simple-seeming questions that aren't answered anywhere, usually solving the problem by guesswork. To top it all off, I've never been confident in debugging for XP -- though my G7 works just fine with 98SE & 2000. You're taking a little chance, sure, but this is equivalent to another company's package that costs 10 times as much, which seems like a great way to leap into the industry.}

Paid $80 for this program and have never been able to get it running. Continuous errors on startup, despite the fact that I am trying to run it on a quality Windows XP Pro, IBM A31P machine. Basically, just give your $80 to the nice kid working at the cash register, and skip the purchase -- your money will be better spent.

By the way, tried to download patches to update my software, but oddly enough, the Magix website is "down"

i bought this program about 3 months ago and haven't had a chance to work with it until now. the best thing i can say about the program is at least i've had 3 months to get over the 80 bucks i paid for it - i may as well have thrown the $$ out the window. the program is the MOST user UNfriendly program i've ever used, the documentation is essentially worthless, and the virtual instruments are so virtual they can't be found! i'm more than disappointed - i'm ticked off. i wouldn't even pay the reduced price for it today if someone paid me.