Mac Users, After Logic Express Install, Can I Delete GarageBand

[Cobalt Blue]

Possibly idiotic question, but I have just installed Logic Express 9. I have checked the loops library, the instruments, and the plug-ins, and everything (except three incompatible plug-ins) have found their way to LogicExpress 9's library.

 

So can I safely uninstall/delete GarageBand? (I would rather not have two rather huge apps on the hard drive if one of them is superfluous.)

 

Thank you.

[sxyryan]

I only kept it because of the loops and junk.

 

So I'd certainly like to know. My harddrive could use every ounce of available space haha.

[kit_strong]

Huge? Garage Band is less than 300MB. I like having both because I still find it much easier (and less resource intensive) to use Garage Band for tracking

[Cobalt Blue]

 

Huge? Garage Band is less than 300MB. I like having both because I still find it much easier (and less resource intensive) to use Garage Band for tracking

 

 

I suppose these things are relative, and it's possible I need to undergo a paradigm shift. But my first computer was a Mac Classic with 4MB, so 300MB still seems like a lot of memory to have tied up if it's not necessary to do so.

[nicholai]

leave it. all tools are good tools.

[kit_strong]

 

I suppose these things are relative, and it's possible I need to undergo a paradigm shift. But my first computer was a Mac Classic with 4MB, so 300MB still seems like a lot of memory to have tied up if it's not necessary to do so.

 

 

My first computer (Vic 20 followed by Commodore 64) had a tape drive. It literally took 40 minutes to load Telengard. When we got our floppy disc and I transferred the game over the load time dropped to about 2 minutes.

My first PC had dual floppy drives.

[Cobalt Blue]

 

My first computer (Vic 20 followed by Commodore 64) had a tape drive. It literally took 40 minutes to load Telengard. When we got our floppy disc and I transferred the game over the load time dropped to about 2 minutes. My first PC had dual floppy drives.

 

 

OMG, forty minutes to load Telengard?

 

P.S. What's Telengard?

 

I see your point clearly, though: Get past these antiquated notions of what constitutes a "huge amount of memory."

[nicholai]

 

My first computer (Vic 20 followed by Commodore 64) had a tape drive. It literally took 40 minutes to load Telengard. When we got our floppy disc and I transferred the game over the load time dropped to about 2 minutes. My first PC had dual floppy drives.

 

 

I miss my c64. I used to hack by 300 baud modem. God I'm old.

[BydoEmpire]

My first computer (Vic 20 followed by Commodore 64) had a tape drive. It literally took 40 minutes to load Telengard. When we got our floppy disc and I transferred the game over the load time dropped to about 2 minutes. My first PC had dual floppy drives.

I loved Telengard (although I loved Temple of Apshai more). My first computer was a 64 - our neighbor had a Vic. Good stuff. I still have my 64, and it still runs great 25+ years later. Can't say that about many consumer electronics these days.

 

Telengard:

 

Temple of Apshai:

 

I have never tried to uninstall GarageBand. I don't really use it but honestly, hard drive space is dirt cheap these days so I'd just leave it. No idea why you can't uninstall, though. Maybe because it's tied in with other iLife apps or something?

[niceguy]

 

Possibly idiotic question, but I have just installed Logic Express 9. I have checked the loops library, the instruments, and the plug-ins, and everything (except three incompatible plug-ins) have found their way to LogicExpress 9's library. So can I safely uninstall/delete GarageBand? (I would rather not have two rather huge apps on the hard drive if one of them is superfluous.) Thank you.

 

 

I'd recommend you not delete GarageBand. It's really not a large program (on the order of megabytes), and when it comes to computers, deleting programs often has unforeseen complications way down the line.

 

If hard drive space is an issue, I highly recommend you use an external hard drive for recording. I use a Glyph Portagig (firewire, thru Thunderbolt), and it holds all my project files. Much easier on the actual Mac.

[sxyryan]

I don't have a thunderbolt enabled mac, but I was thinking of upgrading to a new external with firewire 800. Is it stable? I'd be using it for recording and during my occasional dj gigs (mostly just music for small parties and weddings).

 

I know it's way faster but I haven't spent enough time with it to figure out its stability.

[niceguy]

I don't have a thunderbolt enabled mac, but I was thinking of upgrading to a new external with firewire 800. Is it stable? I'd be using it for recording and during my occasional dj gigs (mostly just music for small parties and weddings). I know it's way faster but I haven't spent enough time with it to figure out its stability.

 

I've had no issues with my external firewire. I'd been recording directly onto my Mac, but when I switched, I did notice an actual increase in stability and load times.

 

Just don't do USB!

[sxyryan]

Thanks much! I've been using USB, but not directly. I copy whatever project folder I'm working with to the internal, do my thing, and copy back to the external.

 

The macbook is going to get a harddrive and probably ram upgrade in the next couple months, but a new external is first on the list.

[niceguy]

 

Thanks much! I've been using USB, but not directly. I copy whatever project folder I'm working with to the internal, do my thing, and copy back to the external. The macbook is going to get a harddrive and probably ram upgrade in the next couple months, but a new external is first on the list.

 

 

Dude, I was running a MacBook with 4GB RAM. Last fall, I upgraded to an iMac with 16GB RAM.

 

There is NO COMPARISON. The RAM boost is the single-most important improvement I've ever experienced!

[HeimBrent]

I almost deleted GarageBand until I found out that Logic Pro won't let me use the built in microphone in my laptop, so that's what I use GarageBand for these days. A multitrack for recording ideas when I'm somewhere else than in my "studio" with a guitar and my Mac.

[honeyiscool]

GarageBand is quite small, and much of what drives Logic is shared with GarageBand anyway, meaning you don't actually have two huge apps, you have two apps with a huge amount of overlap.

 

Also, I would not consider GarageBand to be superfluous. I use GarageBand as much as I use Logic. I much prefer to record and sketch ideas in GarageBand, even if I'll switch to Logic at the mixing stage.

[honeyiscool]

 

Thanks much! I've been using USB, but not directly. I copy whatever project folder I'm working with to the internal, do my thing, and copy back to the external. The macbook is going to get a harddrive and probably ram upgrade in the next couple months, but a new external is first on the list.

Upgrade the RAM first, then just upgrade the internal one. Why do you want to keep copying things in and out all the time? A 500 GB drive is like $80 and you're never gonna fill that up just recording music, that's for sure.

 

External should be for backups.

[Cobalt Blue]

I can only increase my Ram (I have 3GB now) with one more GB. The expense would be nominal, but is it worth the trouble to add 1GB?

[sxyryan]

 

Upgrade the RAM first, then just upgrade the internal one. Why do you want to keep copying things in and out all the time? A 500 GB drive is like $80 and you're never gonna fill that up just recording music, that's for sure. External should be for backups.

 

 

I'd end up filling up a 500 in not too long as I have an overly large digital music collection and I do some video editing, along with a little bit of gaming. And it has yet to stutter on anything (4gb of RAM) so the harddrive is first, and I'm going big or not at all. Still doing my research, I have conflicting sources telling that a TB drive will or will not fit in my model MB so I have yet to order it. I know 750 will fit, but I'd like to go as big as possible so I never have to do it again.

 

And externals don't always have to be for backups. A quality external can be just as viable for normal storage as a internal drive. I'd like to dual boot with Windows, which is harder with an external. So I'd like to have a chunk of space partitioned on the internal for that with a lot of my storage based on the external.

[BydoEmpire]

I've been using an external usb 2.0 drive on my iMac for couple years now and have and no issues. Granted, I'm doing "home studio" type of stuff, typically recording only one or two tracks at a time.

[WRGKMC]

The drawback of recording to a laptop is one internal drive.

it doesnt take much to bog it down with large audio files.

alt least with a desktop you can have several internal drives

and write of the tracks to a separate drive so you dont big the OS down.

having two heads with two drives is twice as efficiant recording and you

dont have OS drive working its ass off laying down tracks and running the

OS and program at the same time.

 

300MB is not allot of disk space when you consider one 5 minuite 16 track song can take up

one gig and a mixdown at 24/44 can take up 50 megs.

 

The problem deinstalling it can cause some share files to be lost possibly making parts of Logic fail.

If and when you get a new drive, just dont install Garage band and you're better off not haveing

fragmented program files all over the place. Always defrage before installing new programs too so

parts of the program arent installed all over the drive which sloes it down.

 

I'd likely leave both. On my PC DAW I have several daw programs installed. They all share the same VST plugins,

so when I'm Running Sonar, I have access to all the stock plugins from Cubase in sonar and vice versa.

Also when I upgraded from Cakewalk 8 to 9, to Sonar 4, then Sonar 8.5 I just left the older programs on there.

I have access to all the older plugins running the new programs.

 

If the program isnt loaded its not using any additional physical memory,

it simply resides on the hard drive untill the programs opened. So if the though is

having the program deinstalled will free up physical memory, its highly unlikely. If anything,

disableing any task bar apps and programs that load automatically when you boot up

will do more than anything else.

 

I'm not sure how its viewed with Macs, but in windows you simply do a Ctl, Alt, Del and bring up the

task manager and view processes and see what programs are hogging all the physical memory.

 

Then you can use that to optimize the computer and stop all those unnessasary non audio programs

from loading and sucking up mmemory. Then when you boot all you got running is the OS and the audio gear

with all other bells and whistles shut off. I can make a single core processor run as good as an unoptimized

dual core system for audio once I do all my tweaks.

 

If you have to use the computer for other things, then having a dual boot system is best.

Boot to the one partition for recording and the other for internet, word processing etc.

again you need the disk space or multiple drives to do this. I have about 5 computers at home

so I have the option of optimizing eacgh for separate jobs. I have one for recording only. one for mastering only,

etc then I have some of them networked together. I used to transfer my finished mixes to my mastering/CD burning

computer, but since they came out with USB drives, the transfer to a thumb drive is much quicker so i removed the network card

from my DAW and grabbed a little more speed doing so.

[Cobalt Blue]

Thank you to everyone for your contributions to this thread, and thank you, WRGKMC, for topping it off with an absolutely superb, richly detailed response. I thank everyone sincerely.

 

I have decided to NOT uninstall GarageBand, to do as HoneyIsCool suggested--sketch songs with GarageBand and then move them to Logic to edit and mix. This will help, too, with not allowing the learning curve (though much is similar between the two programs) to keep me away from what I really need to be doing: getting a bunch of new songs recorded.

 

Again, thank you, everyone.

[honeyiscool]

 

I can only increase my Ram (I have 3GB now) with one more GB. The expense would be nominal, but is it worth the trouble to add 1GB?

 

 

No but what prevents you from replacing the existing chips with 4 gig chips or larger?

 

http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Channel-SODIMM-Memory-CMSO16GX3M2A1333C9/dp/B006DI9PG8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1336665795&sr=1-1

[Cobalt Blue]

No but what prevents you from replacing the existing chips with 4 gig chips or larger? http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Channel-SODIMM-Memory-CMSO16GX3M2A1333C9/dp/B006DI9PG8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1336665795&sr=1-1

 

My iMac can expand only to 4MB. (I'm afraid that I wasn't forward thinking enough (and I didn't have the funds at the time) to buy an iMac with greater expandability.)

This is my iMac profile:

 

[sxyryan]

^^ Mine MBP has 4 and it chugs a long pretty good. The only time I ever run into issues is if I'm running a multitude of programs while messing in logic. Not my typical scenario, but sometimes I'm multitasking.