Paul Hartnoll's favourite music software

“Logic Pro is where I do all my writing and I love almost every aspect of it. My favourite bits of it are its openness, the way I can work without it becoming too technical, unless I want it to - then it’s so vast I’d never see the bottom.

"The plug-ins are fantastic, too, but I know people who use Logic and bypass them for third-party ones without even trying them out properly. Fools! The synths are brilliant, as is Ultrabeat, but the sampler could do with being overhauled, as it’s way out of date compared to the competition."

FULL REVIEW: Apple Logic Pro 9

“Without a doubt my favourite live tool, and I enjoy using it as a studio writing tool as well, but it’s a little bit more haphazard. Live is where I go if I don’t know where I want to go, if you know what I mean. It’s like a fun playground.”

FULL REVIEW: Ableton Live 8

“This is absolutely incredible. I did a film score recently with just analogue synths and Synplant. It has a different mindset and that’s what you go to it for, plus it’s got some amazing capabilities. There’s the way that it’s like a different sound on each note, which you can then spin while it changes the assignment of where the sound comes from. It’s a really quirky but infinitely usable soft synth.”

FULL REVIEW: Sonic Charge Synplant

“We were given a beta copy of this and it’s one of the few soft synths that I always go to. I never feel like I’m compromising my sound by using this program rather than a hardware synth.”

PREVIEW: GForce ImpOSCar 2

“Albino 3 has a really lovely sound to it. If I make a good patch on it, I usually can’t replicate it with my hardware analogue synths, which, to me, is the measure of a good soft synth.”

FIND OUT MORE: LinPlug Albino 3