Macintosh Music Production Guide

Introduction

This guide is intended to serve as guide for the producer who's just getting started using the Apple Macintosh, specifically OS X, for making music. It's focused primarily on those doing electronic music or hip-hop production, since that's what I do. It's also focused on tools that are free or cheap, since most people starting out don't have much loot to drop on software. I can't stand software piracy, so I try to help people find the stuff that's available and free or cheap.

This guide is in pretty rough form right now; I intend to add commentary to help you make choices about what will work best for you. If you have suggestions or questions, please drop me a line.

Finally, a big thank you to all the software developers out there who've made these tools.

Resources

Production applications

CHEAP

• GarageBand ($50)
• Tracktion ($80)
• Plogue Bidule (free for now, since it's beta - price TBD)

MID-LEVEL

• Ableton Live ($300)
• Logic Express ($300)
• Pro Tools LE ($450, includes MBox hardware)

PRO

• Logic Pro
• Pro Tools

Other applications

• Soundhack - great application for mangling sound; hard to understand at first, but very cool...

Plug-ins

Audio Units (Logic, etc)

• DigitalFishPhones plug-ins - their compressor ("Blockfish"), is great.
• MDA effects plug-ins (note: there are both VST & AU plug-ins available on this page)
• Bram/SmartElectronix VST plug-ins (note: there are both VST & AU plug-ins available on this page)
• DestroyFX/SmartElectronix plug-ins

VST (Cubase, Live, etc)

• DigitalFishPhones plug-ins - their compressor ("Blockfish"), is great.
• MDA effects plug-ins (note: there are both VST & AU plug-ins available on this page)
• MDA VST instrument plug-ins
• Bram/SmartElectronix VST plug-ins (note: there are both VST & AU plug-ins available on this page)
• DestroyFX/SmartElectronix plug-ins
• +decimate - great for dropping the bitrate and sampling rate of things - get that lo-fi sound

RTAS (Pro Tools)

• Bomb Factory plug-ins for Pro Tools TDM and LE systems running on Windows XP or Mac OS X.

• Bomb Factory BF76 (formerly, Bomb Factory 1176): Digital emulation of the vintage 1176 Peak Limiter
• BF Essentials Clip Remover: Fast, accurate tool for repairing clipped audio recordings
• BF Essentials Correlation Meter: Troubleshoots phase coherency on stereo tracks or stereo submixes
• BF Essentials Meter Bridge: RMS and Peak VU metering with calibration on any channel, with minimal impact on DSP resources
• BF Essentials Noise Meter: Three meters in one: A-weighted noise meter, a Robinson-Dadson equal-loudness meter, and a VU meter with 100 dB of visual range
• BF Essentials Tuner: Fast-tracking, accurate instrument tuner
• Funk Logic Mastererizer: Lo-fi sound effects plug-in