Emagic was a music software and hardware company based in Rellingen, Germany and a satellite office in Grass Valley, CA. On July 1, 2002 Emagic was bought by Apple Computer. Emagic's Windows-based product offerings were discontinued on September 30, 2002.
The company was best known for its music sequencer, Logic. Logic stemmed from the then famous Creator, then Notator, made by C-Lab (the company's forerunner) for the Atari ST platform. In 1992, Notator Logic was launched for Atari and Macintosh, followed by a version for Windows. The "Notator" was dropped from the name and the product was redesigned from the ground up, and the product became known under the name "Emagic Logic". Original copies of Emagic's logic retailed for $699 and sold its plugins for $99–$299 apiece before Apple bundled them all together. When Apple bought Emagic, Logic had "Emagic" dropped from the title, and is now called Logic Pro (with a cut-down version called Logic Express).
In 1995, Emagic (then C-Lab) bought the rights to the hardware design of the Atari Falcon computer and began producing their own versions due to continued demand for an inexpensive Digital Audio Workstation. It was discontinued when commodity PC and Macintosh hardware became more cost-effective than the proprietary Atari based systems.
In late 2007, the product line was revised to a software package, Logic Studio, including Logic Pro 8 and MainStage (a live performance application) and Logic Express 8 as the cut-down package. The version 8 product line was compatible with Intel Macs and has a notably lower pricetag than previous versions.
The other major software product that Emagic offered was SoundDiver, a sound editor which could be adapted for several different hardware synthesizers. While there was a beta version for Mac OS X, production of SoundDiver appears to have been discontinued.
Emagic formerly offered a line of audio interface hardware, the Audiowerk PCI cards, as well as USB units. A potential post-acquisition successor to these products, the unreleased Asteroid FireWire interface, was the subject of the Apple v. Does trade secret litigation.
Releases using C-Lab/Emagic technology
- Tower Dream - Super Famicom strategy/board video game
- Earth Moving - 12th album by recording artist Mike Oldfield
- Heaven's Open - 14th album by recording artist Mike Oldfield
External links
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