Emagic

» see emagic.de as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

Emagic was founded on September 1 1992 in Rellingen, a town just outside Hamburg, by Gerhard Lengeling and Chris Adam. Both had come out of C-Lab, whose Notator sequencer had been one of the defining pieces of software on the Atari ST. Emagic's first major product was Notator Logic, which became Logic Audio and then simply Logic, and across the 90s it grew into one of the two or three sequencers that professional studios actually ran.

What made Logic distinct in that market was that it ran on both Macintosh and Windows. Emagic also sold hardware, the Unitor MIDI interfaces and the Audiowerk audio cards, and it built a software catalog around the sequencer that included SoundDiver for editing hardware synthesizers and the EXS24 sampler. By 2002 the company was independent and profitable, with a customer base split across two operating systems.

Apple bought it on July 1 2002. The purchase fit a pattern already in motion: Apple was assembling a professional application suite, having taken Final Cut in the late 90s and Nothing Real's Shake earlier in 2002, and a professional audio application it controlled belonged in that set. Within three months the other half of the customer base was gone. On September 30 2002 Emagic announced that Windows development would stop. Logic 5.5.1 was the last Windows release, and the migration offer amounted to buying a Macintosh.

The brand hung on a few more years while the product transitioned. Logic Pro 7 shipped on September 29 2004 as the first version released under the Apple name, with Apple providing support. SoundDiver and the hardware lines were discontinued. Emagic formally ceased to exist on June 12 2006.

~ the chronicle ~

~ the windows cut ~

Logic sat in a corner of software i never had reason to enter. What the record shows is how sharp the September 2002 cut was. Logic on Windows was not a token port kept alive out of politeness. It had a real installed base of studios and independent producers who had built their whole setup around it, and the announcement handed them a final version rather than a transition.

The practical option for most of them was Cubase, which Steinberg was still shipping on both platforms. Steinberg's Windows position after 2002 was stronger than it had been before, entirely as a gift from Apple.

~ what apple kept ~

Apple kept the sequencer and the sampler engine and let most of the rest go. SoundDiver, which had been the standard editor for a wide range of hardware synthesizers, was discontinued and never replaced, leaving a long tail of gear with no modern way to program it. The Unitor and Audiowerk hardware lines ended. GarageBand, released in January 2004, was built on Logic's engine and passed the professional product on user count within a year.

Lengeling stayed at Apple and ran the audio applications group for years afterward, which is why Logic Pro remained a serious product instead of being quietly starved. That is the difference between this acquisition and most of the ones on this site. Apple killed the company and the Windows build but not the software.

~ the name ~

Emagic GmbH was formally dissolved on June 12 2006. By then the software had carried Apple branding for nearly two years and the Rellingen office had been folded into Apple's European operation. emagic.de stopped resolving. For a product that a good share of European studios ran through the 1990s, the ending was administrative rather than dramatic, which is how most software companies actually die.

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