15 ms·

Logic Pro X

233 points by SanderMak 13y ago

icarus_drowning 13y ago
No 32-bit plugins is an interesting choice. Logic 9 can be launched in 64-bit mode with a 32-bit bridge that opens/closes based on whether or not you have any 32-bit VST/AU plugins trying to run. I've got a couple of Sonnox plugins that aren't available in 64-bit which is going to keep me off Logic X until they [Sonnox] get their act together. Edit: Clarifying a poor use of a pronoun.
- thirdsun 13y ago
  Really, at this point the developer of those plugins is to blame. Ableton recently decided not to work on bridging 32 Bit plugins too and I really prefer them and Apple to spend their resources on other issues.
isomorph 13y ago
Very happy about this, although probably means I'm going to redo all the tracks I've been making in the last few months while getting to grips with Logic Pro 9...
marknutter 13y ago
Can any musicians in the know about music software comment on how this compares to say, Ableton Live?
- icarus_drowning 13y ago
  I spend about 8 hours a day in Logic Pro 9, and while I haven't used Ableton a ton, I get the impression that Ableton Live is more geared toward synthetic/electronic and live performance applications, whereas Logic is a more generally focused DAW that competes more directly with things like Pro Tools.
- cpenner461 13y ago
  Indeed - I've been considering getting a DAW to hobby shop with, and have been on the fence between Logic, Ableton Live and Reason. My (perhaps naive) impression is that Logic seems to be more geared towards recording live music, while Ableton and Reason seem to be more geared towards creating music in the program. They can all do both (recording live and create), but that's just my impression watching their demo videos etc (perhaps describing it as "core strength" vs "geared towards" is more accurate?). I'd love to hear from someone who's actually used one/more of them.
  - icarus_drowning 13y ago
    I used to use Reason (way back in version 3), and now am a full-time Logic user for all my music production. I'd say this is a pretty fair characterization, although I actually use Logic with VST/AU instruments to do essentially the same thing I used to do in Reason.
  - MrJagil 13y ago
    I use all of them daily. First things first. What I quickly discovered was that Logic _sounds_ better. Just dragging in a sample from you desktop seemed to reveal that logic was processing it in a higher quality. A weird thing, and maybe it's placebo, but everytime I go back to ableton I notice this. Furthermore, the bottom line is, my productions just sounds better in Logic. Maybe it's the workflow it encourages, I'm not sure. All I know is that no serious audio engineer would use anything else than Pro Tools or Logic for a serious recording, and I agree. At least that's my experience. Regarding Reason: In my opinion, it has some of the best synths in the business. Which is why i rewire into Logic. A couple of youtube tutorials on Thor and you'll be going strong. Ableton, well, I don't care much for it. The only thing i really miss is how easy it is to manipulate audio in it. A lot of people talk about how fast it is, but the design always seemed to get in my way. Personal preference i guess...
    - icarus_drowning 13y ago
      The Normalize on export function in Logic is works weirdly well too, especially considering you have almost no control over it. I almost always leave it on and in 5 years of professional composition work, have only chosen to switch it off once or twice-- and only because it was pushing some audio artifacts to the forefront that I had previously corrected.
- chasing 13y ago
  Yes. I've used both extensively. They share some qualities, but as the name suggests, Ableton Live is really geared towards live performance use. Logic is more for straight-up production. I mean, people use Ableton Live for production, but I think Logic is more flexible overall. (Because it's simpler, though, Live may be friendlier for people just getting into digital audio production.) Also, just check out the interfaces: Logic is more for precision work, Ableton is all about getting to your actions quickly, as would be super-necessary when performing live and every millisecond counts.
  - thirdsun 13y ago
    I disagree. Live started as performance and it is often presented as such, but its studio workflow is not a second class citizen at all. In fact the general workflow is one of Live's strong points. I spent a lot of time with both Live and Logic and I rarely used complex software that is as intuitive as Live. In my opinion everything in Live is where you'd expect it to be. Devices are plain and straight forward, no brushed steel backgrounds or cluttered "science fiction interfaces". This accessibility made switch to Live (again) after several years of Logic usage. You'll get great results with both, but after all I realized I value Ableton's straight forward workflow. And then there's also Max 4 Live, which enables a whole other world of extensibility and tweaking. The only thing I miss is Logic's low latency mode which is useful if your project becomes big and you need to record another track late in the production progress.
    - hissworks 13y ago
      |The only thing I miss is Logic's low latency mode which is useful if your project becomes big and you need to record another track late in the production progress.| To do this you can "freeze" a collection of tracks in Live. It essentially locks every action you've applied to a track (and perhaps even quietly renders them to temp WAVs) in order to free up computing power.
      - thirdsun 13y ago
        Of course I know about freezing, but low latency mode just bypassed several resource heavy effects/instruments with the click of a button - no rendering time, or (un)freezing required. It worked very well.
- retrogradeorbit 13y ago
  I've used a lot of DAWs. Namely Logic, Sonar, Nuendo, Protools, Reason, Ableton, FLStudio and Reaper. And my conclusion is that Reaper is by far the best. Your opinion may be different, but give it a try. It has a free trial period and the full version is very cost effective. Add in the SWS extensions and the scripting support (I'm using python) and it becomes very powerful. Put the House of White Tie skin on it, add in some reamote slaves and combine with the fact that it is rock solid and never crashes... and you have, IMHO, what is currently the worlds best DAW.
  - timdorr 13y ago
    And for those wondering about Reaper, it's from Winamp creator Justin Frankel. Dude makes some awesome software.
  - marknutter 13y ago
    Could you elaborate a bit on what you can do with scripting in Reaper? That sounds very interesting.
    - retrogradeorbit 13y ago
      You can use it for all kinds of things. I use it for automating repetitive UI tasks. Say, taking a high-hat track, finding a high-hat transient, splitting all the drum tracks on that point, grouping those drums takes into a group for editing and moving onto the next transient. That's a bit derived, but anywhere where you find yourself manually repeating UI actions over and over again, you can save yourself hours by scripting it. You can save your scripts as actions and then even bind them to a key.
  - ascendant2323 13y ago
    As a Cubase user who generally likes Cubase, but is considering switching to Ableton for the primary purpose of using Macro controls... would Reaper be likely to meet me needs? Specifically, I'm talking about having one "knob" or control that controls multiple parameters across multiple VSTs, with varying ranges. Can Reaper do that? The fact that Ableton can, and Cubase can't, is pretty much the only reason I'm thinking of switching.
- louthy 13y ago
  I've always thought the Ableton sound engine was pretty average compared to Logic. Ableton has always felt a bit muddy in its summing (IMHO!).
  - cageface 13y ago
    Ableton's summing is completely transparent, as numerous tests have demonstrated. It's really just basic float math. Ableton's reputation for muddy sound has a lot more to do with somewhat mediocre stock effects plugins and the audio stretching algorithms.
- abruzzi 13y ago
  The one thing that has always kept me from Live (and this probably applies to .001% of DAW users) is last I checked it doesn't support score based composition. To me the easiest way to visualize my music is good old-fashioned 350 year old notation. My process is to compose by dropping notes on a staff, then either tweak the MIDI (to sound less mechanical) or re-record tracks live, after the composition phase has completed. In the past I have found three apps that handle this well: older versions of Cakewalk on windows, Opcode's Studio Vision Pro (tragically murdered by Gibson--something I'll never forgive them for) and Logic. I tried Digital Performer, and could never get the hang of their score view. I've also tried composing in Finale, which has great note entry, but lack anything further. I'm hoping that LPX doesn't munge the note entry too bad.
dmmalam 13y ago
Is this fully cocoafied like FCPX?
mhax 13y ago
The $199.99 price tag is a surprise. Could anyone speculate as to why they'd be pitching it this low, given the price of competitors products?
- objclxt 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure Logic has been $199 since 2011, when it went from retail box to app store download.
- cpenner461 13y ago
  I think Logic Pro has been at that price point for a year or two? But yeah definitely a lot cheaper than some of the competitors.
- egads 13y ago
  Logic 9 was also $199. There's also no upgrade pricing, so even though I just bought Logic 9 six months ago, the relatively low price point makes it a LOT more likely that I'll upgrade.
  - dirkk0 13y ago
    You mean - as a Logic user I have to re-buy it?
- jeremymcanally 13y ago
  Leaves you more money to buy that shiny new Mac Pro to run it on. :)
  - wmeredith 13y ago
    This, or something close to it, is surely the reason. Everything Apple does can be traced to a motivation to sell more hardware. (e.g. iTunes, App Store, iWork, Apple Maps, etc...) Hardware and the OS are their secret sauce, commoditizing everything else (applications, services, content) is in their best interest.
- tazjin 13y ago
Roboprog 13y ago
Do the pitch bend and modulation wheel controls (via MIDI) actually do anything with most of the synth sounds? I've only just started tinkering with the "little brother" Garage Band program, but I was disappointed how bad support was for the pitch bend wheel from my keyboard into the supplied patches. (using pitch bend would cause secondary "note on" events which never got a "note off")
- lewispollard 13y ago
  They do, and they're also fully assignable to whatever params you want to adjust.
- icarus_drowning 13y ago
  Yes, they almost always control something important. In VST/AU instruments they're often assigned to crossfade volume so that you get a natural tone colour change across the dynamic range.
lewispollard 13y ago
'Modern' interface a little extra Melodyne-like functionality with flex pitch, everything else just seems like it was already there but is now easier to access (ie arpeggiator without having to use the environment window)... Am I missing anything major?
- icarus_drowning 13y ago
  The drum stuff seems new, but at first glance looks quite gimmicky. As a professional composer, the last thing I want to see is a picture of a drumkit and various performers in the middle of my DAW interface.
  - lewispollard 13y ago
    Yeah, that's what I mean - we already have the ability to easily create drum kits in Ultrabeat, that just seems like a simple interface for new users. Not sure if it's worth upgrading, personally.
- williamcotton 13y ago
  And it looks like the finally removed the Environment completely! [EDIT] Nope, the Environment is still there, my bad!
- droithomme 13y ago
  You can write MIDI processing plugins using Javascript, that's pretty big. And most everything is now pushed to the iPad for touch editing.
  - lewispollard 13y ago
    The Javascript thing is pretty cool, I missed that!
cpenner461 13y ago
As mentioned in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052122) I've been considering getting a DAW to hobby shop around with. I've lightly dabbled with several over the years, and am very comfortable on my actual instrument, but am a bit overwhelmed when I look at some of these for doing anything other than just recording and basic mixing/editing (would be nice to build some background/accompanying tracks from some of the synths etc). I think I just need to pick one and dive in to figure out how it all works - are there any resources anyone here can recommend for doing just that? Are the provided tutorials from the DAW vendors sufficient?
- oatmealsnap 13y ago
  A more simple version would be Garage Band. Would that suffice for your needs?
  - cpenner461 13y ago
    Yeah, Garage Band is probably the one I've played with the most. I envision myself as a "power user" for most things though (perhaps falsely so!) so I'd like to try something more advanced.
- dankoss 13y ago
  Do you have a Mac or an iPad? If so I'd recommend Garageband as an easy place to start, and there are plenty of tutorials available for it.
- tuzemec 13y ago
  I can recommend Studio One: http://studioone.presonus.com/ http://studioone.presonus.com/ It have fully functional trial and kinda flexible pricing model. I've switched to it from Cubase year ago and I don't look back.
- OMBUG 13y ago
  If you're looking to get into it, but reluctant to spend $200 off the bat, I'd recommend taking a look at REAPER (www.reaper.fm) - it's significantly cheaper ($60) and the only area it's really lacking compared to Logic and the like is the bundled samples/synths.
jasonlingx 13y ago
Finally! :)
zefhous 13y ago
One of the drummer demos is very reminiscent of "A Sorta Fairytale" by Tori Amos: http://cl.ly/163g410m402w http://cl.ly/163g410m402w Just a tad faster and the kick is more busy, but very much the same feel.
kunai 13y ago
For all the talk about how Apple hates skeuomorphism, when I got to this part I started wondering if I was looking at an April Fools' joke: http://imagebin.org/264732 http://imagebin.org/264732
- glasshead969 13y ago
  It will be interesting how they will redesign GarageBand for iPad when iOS 7 comes out.
- icefox 13y ago
  Is the ipad "pairing" a new feature or an old one? "The Logic Remote app lets you wirelessly pair your Mac and your iPad — giving you the freedom to control Logic Pro from anywhere in the room." Having audio buttons I push with the mouse always seemed silly, but when I get to use my fingers it seems at least not as bad.
- calinet6 13y ago
  It would be very poignant of you to point that out if the interface was not trying to emulate famous and well-known real-world objects. Music people eat that up. It's entirely the right choice, and the rest of the interface is clean. There are no problems here, just good design overall it seems.
  - wwweston 13y ago
    > There are no problems here Speaking as a longtime user of both physical audio gear and audio software (not to mention one of the "music people"), I think there is a big problem: knobs. Knobs don't translate well to the screen. It's hard to do a twisting motion with the mouse or a finger on a touch screen. So a lot of programs just make them a kind of compact slider/fader -- you move the mouse up and down, and the knob turns. This is an interaction that can have some problematic interactions with scrolling and/or screen real-estate availability even after you've figured out how this works. And it's not exactly intuitive. And there's often just better ways to do things. For example, I'd be happy if I never saw another EQ knob again in software -- being able to visualize/tweak a spectrum envelope is a clear winner over having to twiddle knobs. Or heck, I'd rather have MAX or pd's box-value compact faders that I can enter values into (along with sliding the mouse up and down) than knobs. I know the familiar is often fun and feels accessible, I even know there are sometimes where the compact-fader thing is helpful. I just think knobs are way over used in software and it is a problem.
bsaul 13y ago
The price tag really reflects that the music industry is the poorest of all creative industries (aka video, photo, 3D and web). When i think about all the genius algorithms and technologies that products like Ableton or logic Pro ship it really saddens me.
- deleted 13y ago
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- calinet6 13y ago
  As with many of Apple's recent price drops (OSX, iWork, etc. etc.) I think it's a highly strategic and intentional move, not reflective of the greater market, but showing that Apple is enabling the larger success of their brand by enabling more people to purchase and use these pro apps at a lower price point. Plus, it will sell Macs, both laptops and Mac Pros. Smart.
  - gamegod 13y ago
    This strategy benefits Apple, but screws over independent software developers/vendors. Look at the top 10 apps in the Mac App Store. That list is always dominated by Apple's applications like Logic and iWork because of this pricing strategy. Nobody else can afford to sell a DAW for $200 and make money. IMHO it's some kind of anti-competitiveness but I don't know if there's a term for it. Maybe it's just a fact of life when Apple owns and controls the entire software/hardware ecosystem.
    - snom380 13y ago
      Of course others can afford it. Whether they want to is another matter, but other companies like Propellerheads make lots of money selling software in the same price range. Also, don't forget that most of the Apple Pro Apps came about because pretty much none of the creative market vendors were initially on board with OSX, that only happened later when they saw OSX grow.
    - dorkrawk 13y ago
      That's not totally true. I've heard from several professional musicians who use Reaper ( http://www.reaper.fm/ http://www.reaper.fm/ ) and it sells for $225.
NamTaf 13y ago
For a company that just threw out skeuomorphism as a design principle, the amount of drumkit, pedal, amp and mixing deck images this thing has is surprising. The pitch correction stuff is cool - I dreamed of that sort of stuff a while ago, but never made any attempt to try to work out how it'd work. I wonder how it works with voices and the like, as opposed to string instruments.
- S_A_P 13y ago
  Well Pro Apps are kind of an exception as you usually are trying to emulate the exact properties of very specific hardware. Amp and synthesizer simulators seem more real if you have an accurate UI analog to the real hardware.
  - laumars 13y ago
    Not exactly. Sadly this is one of those instances where a concise point isn't an accurate one. Sequencers (Logic Pro, Cubase, etc) were originally built to work along side classic studio hardware. And while more and more studios these days go all software, the sequencer paradigm has stuck because it largely works. You're also right that many soft-synths / virtual instruments are there to emulate real hardware, but there's also plugins like tone generators which are quite a departure from the classic studio paradigm. Aside sequencers, you can get other types of DAWs like trackers which, trigger digital audio projects like one would with a sequencer; except trackers have a completely digital approach (watching a tracker play is more akin to watching a hex dump scroll down a terminal emulator than watching waveforms scroll horizontally across a sequencer). Then there's DAWs based around programming which are as far removed from skeuomorphism as you can get. But those are very much a niche product. Also let's not forget that the old studios wouldn't have had anything akin to modern audio editors (Soundforge, Audacity, etc). That's a very modern concept. However because we have adopted the old play/stop symbols that have existed on audio hardware for decades, and because oscilloscopes have made us very aware of waveforms, audio editors often look skeuomorphic even when they're really not (or perhaps it makes more sense to say that they are skeuomorphic, but not out of design - out of necessity due to sound being a wave).
caplingerc 13y ago
"Retro Synth. Far-out sounds. Not so far away." hopefully this means they got rid of the ridiculously over-complicated extraterrestrial-looking synth interfaces in favor of something that actually makes sense.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  Yeah. Considering how much Apple prides itself on good UI design, I have no clue how ES2 happened.
  - splicer 13y ago
    It's by Emagic, not Apple. It used to be available as a separate product: http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMAESC http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMAESC
    - adamnemecek 13y ago
      It's a part of an Apple product. Apple does not make their laptops either yet you consider elements of the computer design to be from Apple.
      - splicer 13y ago
        I was referring to the fact that ES2 was designed before Apple acquired Emagic.
ssharp 13y ago
I think this is going to push me fully over the edge to record my non-EDM music on the Mac. I had been teetering between FL Studio & Sonar on Windows and various OSX-based DAWs for this purpose and am ready to settle on something permanent. Logic adoption has been growing substantially and I feel 100% safe jumping head-first into the Logic ecosystem. In general, I've been a Mac user for everything but production for over a decade and am so sick of keeping a Windows machine running for sake of production. I don't think I could switch over for EDM/hip-hop though, as my workflow is so engrained in FL Studio and I use so many advanced controls and features.
- leviathant 13y ago
  Curious, have you ever considered Reaper? I'm considering making the jump over the course of the next year or so (switching DAWs is such a pain).
  - ssharp 13y ago
    I've never heard of Reaper -- I'll have to look into it! Switching is a serious pain, especially when music is a free-time hobby and you want to spend that time actually creating and not learning new tools and workflows.
- initself 13y ago
  I moved from PCs to recording non-EDM music on Logic in 2009. It's perfect.
enen 13y ago
Holy crap... my upgrade from Live 8 to Live 9 costs 250 euro. And this is 200 bucks. I wish I was not so deeply in love with Ableton so I could move to Logic.
wavesounds 13y ago
Has anyone tried using Github to manage and share a Logic Pro project? I work on music with someone 300 miles away and I'd love to have the power of git. Right now were both using different DAWs and export audio to dropbox. This release of Logic looks great and my partner is already using Logic so if I switch over and implemented git we could ideally be working off the same files all the time with version tracking, backups and branches. I could see it potentially being very large though and merging audio files probably wouldn't be possible so maybe this is something that still needs to be built?
- deleted 13y ago
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- arielpts 13y ago
  I'm assuming that the Logic Pro files are binary, not text, this link may provide useful information: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/104453/version-control-for-binaries http://stackoverflow.com/questions/104453/version-control-fo...
- deleted 13y ago
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- Griever 13y ago
  I've actually been storing my Logic projects on GitHub for a while. It works pretty well for the most part, but I do run into some issues when dealing with the size of the files. Perhaps Logic X shrinks them down in size a bit in comparison to Logic 9, but I doubt it. Here's the repo if you are interested: https://github.com/jpsullivan/LogicProjects https://github.com/jpsullivan/LogicProjects One day I'd really like to make an open source album that people could fork to remix entirely new sounds. It'd also be nice to get some people talking about best practices when mixing. Perhaps a Logic Bootstrap if you will.
  - wavesounds 13y ago
    I was also thinking about how cool open source albums would be! Your 'band' could now be 100 different people all spread out around the world. Then perhaps instead of an album being 'done' we'll just release v1.0.
joeblau 13y ago
This looks great. The pitch correction tools are gonna make it a lot easier for that pop singers to sound great even if they aren't. I also REALLY like the iPad remote feature.
graublau 13y ago
Good thing I bought Logic 9 four weeks ago...
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  Same here. I'm kind of pissed. I wonder whether I should try contacting Apple but I'm pretty sure that they won't give a shit.
- Zoepfli 13y ago
  So what's the upgrade policy? I suppose since the Mac App Store doesn't support paid upgrades, everybody gets the new version for free?
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    Nope. Everybody has to pay $200.
    - Zoepfli 13y ago
      Interesting. As far as I remember, for the past 3 years, every app put into those stores by Apple themselves received unlimited upgrades. Everybody wanted to do paid upgrade, pressuring Apple into adding some paid upgrade feature into the store. Apple always declined, saying "do as we do, support unlimited upgrades, you'll earn enough because the market is growing". Some devs did paid upgrades by creating a new app with a new name, creating some issues along the way (people that just bought the old version a day ago have no upgrade path etc.) Not idea. People guessed that Apple would add some "paid upgrade" feature once they needed it themselves. Now Apple decided for the first time to create a paid upgrade, and apparently they - just created a new app... Apple could have done better here.
      - adamnemecek 13y ago
        I believe that this is a new item though. For example, usually you can see the reviews for the previous versions in the app store but there are no reviews for Logic X.
crucialfelix 13y ago
they should just call it Garage Band Pro now. this used to be pro software but they've really killed off their professional users.
- baddox 13y ago
  I have never used any version of Logic, but the reviews I have read are all saying that none of the power features have been removed. The Macworld review is titled "Logic Pro X loses none of its power, gains great new features" [0]. The Loop even explicitly says "Rumors have circulated for a long time that Logic Pro was going to be discontinued or that it was going to be reincarnated as some sort of 'GarageBand Pro.' ... this is far from a GarageBand knockoff. This is the same professional digital audio workstation software that we’ve used for years, only better" [1]. And again, macProVideo says "many people feared Logic would be 'Dumbed-down' into a 'LogicBand / GarageBand Pro,' ... I'm pleased to report, it's the same Logic you know and love, but with a fantastic facelift and some brilliant new features." [2] [0] http://www.macworld.com/article/2044283/logic-pro-x-loses-none-of-its-power-gains-great-new-features.html http://www.macworld.com/article/2044283/logic-pro-x-loses-no... [1] http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/07/16/review-logic-pro-x/ http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/07/16/review-logic-pro-x/ [2] http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/review-2/logic-pro-x-review-top-5-new-features?utm_source=hubrss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=logic-pro-x-review-top-5-new-features http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/review-2/logic-pro-x-review-t...
  - crucialfelix 13y ago
    I've used logic extensively since 1991 on the Atari. I spoke with two other professional users last night and they agreed. Reviews not withstanding, those of us who were power users feel cheated. There were strong rumors that this version was never even going to come out and that the dev team had been reduced.
brunorsini 13y ago
This took forever... I'm impressed by the many updates but think I might just stick to Pro Tools. Switching DAWs is a bit like switching programming languages, in a sense, huge time cost. The built-in iPad remote control is cool though. Neyrinck makes a good one for Pro Tools, however: http://www.neyrinck.com/v-control-pro http://www.neyrinck.com/v-control-pro
stephth 13y ago
Exciting addition, almost missed it: Scripter Extensible plug-in that can process or generate MIDI data using standard JavaScript.
- jianshen 13y ago
  I know this is a niche feature but I think it's an important differentiator (and something that I love After Effects for). I'm probably the only person who's excited to code up my own Arpeggiators and Rhythm pattern generators...
  - mitchty 13y ago
    I don't even know what an Arpeggiator is, sounds cool though.
    - widdershins 13y ago
      If you play a chord into an arpeggiator, it... well, it arpeggiates it. In other words, it plays each note of the chord individually in a particular rhythm (e.g. 16th notes) in a particular pattern (e.g. up/down, up, random). Very, very common in electronic music.
      - mitchty 13y ago
        Cool I had no idea, I'm about as musical as... umm, yeah i've got no analogue. Does it get scaled in specific patterns or is random ok?
        eropple 13y ago
        Patterns, random, fast, short, whatever. Most packaged arpeggiators have all sorts of knobs to twist.
- georgecalm 13y ago
  This caught me by surprise too while looking through the midi fx drop down. Got it to repeat the note I play in a nice (not quite musical yet) pattern. Pretty excitig! I'd love to hear ideas for creative uses of this thing apart from making clever arps.
andyfleming 13y ago
Aside from all of issues (good and bad) surrounding design, features, pricing, etc, I'm just glad to see that Apple is still paying attention to the pro users.
MrGando 13y ago
I hope this doesn't result in another Final Cut Pro X, in that case, everyone back to Pro Tools or whatever alternatives are available.
akrs 13y ago
Check out Blend.io. Its a betaworks-studio product for open-source, cross-geo music collaboration. It currently supports Ableton Live and Maschine but support for other DAWs (including Logic) is coming soon.
- akrs 13y ago
  Btw, Blend is still in private beta but you can use the invite code: EARLYACCESS to sign up now.
mambodog 13y ago
I've been a long time Logic Pro user. Since the updates to Logic slowed to a trickle I've also been using Ableton Live a fair bit. I've always appreciated Logic's clean, well laid out interface (as opposed to say, Cubase) and its general sense of respect for the intelligence of its users. Unfortunately it seems Apple has gone in the direction of Garageband-ifiyng Logic; pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds. The interface is dominated by the flashy new features such as the 'Drummer' and 'Drum Kit Designer' which effectively let you combine a limited set of preset drum sounds with a limited set of preset drumming styles. The result is a similar 'toy' feel to that of Garageband. Professional tools for creativity afford the user the ability to manipulate, combine and repurpose them in as much depth and complexity as user can manage, so that they may seek out new forms, rather than just creating pastiche rehashes of existing ideas. It is apparent from the direction Logic has taken that it is no longer aimed at the professional market, but rather more to the 'Prosumer' category, who aspire to be 'Pro', but who still need a lot of hand-holding. The most displeasing change I've noticed so far is that the 'bypass' button on each instrument and effect, which neatly fitted in with Logic's formerly clean and understated visual style, has now been replaced with a large glowing on/off 'light'. It is succinctly represents all of the changes across the application which discard neat and elegant design for absolute naive ease of use. I have a feeling I'll be using Ableton more from now on.
- bti 13y ago
  What kind of music do you make? I've been wanting to try Ableton out but it kind of looks geared toward working with samples and MIDI. I mostly record guitars and all my instruments live with a mic. Is Ableton appropriate for recording and mixing recorded music? Would you say it is as powerful as Logic Pro 9 (my primary DAW)?
  - ThomPete 13y ago
    A friend of mine did the music & soundfx for FarCry 1 and the latest Hitman game. He's used bot protools and logic but used Ableton for Hitman. So yes you can do the same with ableton.
  - 13y ago
securingsincity 13y ago
For the price i would say this is a pretty ok deal. the other Digital Audio workstations(DAWs) offer a lot of the same features. I was a protools engineer for a while and some of the things they are touting are far from new and protools usually lagged behind sonar and cubase in raw feature set. I have been punting on upgrading from protools 7.4(5+ years) and m-audio delta 1010lt and 44 for a very long time (10 years). What I want to see is hardware that takes advantage of the huge throughput of thunderbolt or usb3, that allows for higher quality audio and many ins and outs. as far as software Reaper - i havent used it in a year or so - for the price is the best DAW on the market no question.
kdot 13y ago
The most important feature for me is Retina support, no other DAW has been updated for Retina displays yet.
imissmyjuno 13y ago
For me, the most interesting part is the iPad remote. Looks like Apple is getting into distributed interfaces.

233 points by SanderMak 13y ago

No 32-bit plugins is an interesting choice. Logic 9 can be launched in 64-bit mode with a 32-bit bridge that opens/closes based on whether or not you have any 32-bit VST/AU plugins trying to run. I've got a couple of Sonnox plugins that aren't available in 64-bit which is going to keep me off Logic X until they [Sonnox] get their act together. Edit: Clarifying a poor use of a pronoun.

thirdsun 13y ago
Really, at this point the developer of those plugins is to blame. Ableton recently decided not to work on bridging 32 Bit plugins too and I really prefer them and Apple to spend their resources on other issues.

isomorph 13y ago

Very happy about this, although probably means I'm going to redo all the tracks I've been making in the last few months while getting to grips with Logic Pro 9...

marknutter 13y ago

Can any musicians in the know about music software comment on how this compares to say, Ableton Live?

icarus_drowning 13y ago
I spend about 8 hours a day in Logic Pro 9, and while I haven't used Ableton a ton, I get the impression that Ableton Live is more geared toward synthetic/electronic and live performance applications, whereas Logic is a more generally focused DAW that competes more directly with things like Pro Tools.
cpenner461 13y ago
Indeed - I've been considering getting a DAW to hobby shop with, and have been on the fence between Logic, Ableton Live and Reason. My (perhaps naive) impression is that Logic seems to be more geared towards recording live music, while Ableton and Reason seem to be more geared towards creating music in the program. They can all do both (recording live and create), but that's just my impression watching their demo videos etc (perhaps describing it as "core strength" vs "geared towards" is more accurate?). I'd love to hear from someone who's actually used one/more of them.
- icarus_drowning 13y ago
  I used to use Reason (way back in version 3), and now am a full-time Logic user for all my music production. I'd say this is a pretty fair characterization, although I actually use Logic with VST/AU instruments to do essentially the same thing I used to do in Reason.
- MrJagil 13y ago
  I use all of them daily. First things first. What I quickly discovered was that Logic _sounds_ better. Just dragging in a sample from you desktop seemed to reveal that logic was processing it in a higher quality. A weird thing, and maybe it's placebo, but everytime I go back to ableton I notice this. Furthermore, the bottom line is, my productions just sounds better in Logic. Maybe it's the workflow it encourages, I'm not sure. All I know is that no serious audio engineer would use anything else than Pro Tools or Logic for a serious recording, and I agree. At least that's my experience. Regarding Reason: In my opinion, it has some of the best synths in the business. Which is why i rewire into Logic. A couple of youtube tutorials on Thor and you'll be going strong. Ableton, well, I don't care much for it. The only thing i really miss is how easy it is to manipulate audio in it. A lot of people talk about how fast it is, but the design always seemed to get in my way. Personal preference i guess...
  - icarus_drowning 13y ago
    The Normalize on export function in Logic is works weirdly well too, especially considering you have almost no control over it. I almost always leave it on and in 5 years of professional composition work, have only chosen to switch it off once or twice-- and only because it was pushing some audio artifacts to the forefront that I had previously corrected.
chasing 13y ago
Yes. I've used both extensively. They share some qualities, but as the name suggests, Ableton Live is really geared towards live performance use. Logic is more for straight-up production. I mean, people use Ableton Live for production, but I think Logic is more flexible overall. (Because it's simpler, though, Live may be friendlier for people just getting into digital audio production.) Also, just check out the interfaces: Logic is more for precision work, Ableton is all about getting to your actions quickly, as would be super-necessary when performing live and every millisecond counts.
- thirdsun 13y ago
  I disagree. Live started as performance and it is often presented as such, but its studio workflow is not a second class citizen at all. In fact the general workflow is one of Live's strong points. I spent a lot of time with both Live and Logic and I rarely used complex software that is as intuitive as Live. In my opinion everything in Live is where you'd expect it to be. Devices are plain and straight forward, no brushed steel backgrounds or cluttered "science fiction interfaces". This accessibility made switch to Live (again) after several years of Logic usage. You'll get great results with both, but after all I realized I value Ableton's straight forward workflow. And then there's also Max 4 Live, which enables a whole other world of extensibility and tweaking. The only thing I miss is Logic's low latency mode which is useful if your project becomes big and you need to record another track late in the production progress.
  - hissworks 13y ago
    |The only thing I miss is Logic's low latency mode which is useful if your project becomes big and you need to record another track late in the production progress.| To do this you can "freeze" a collection of tracks in Live. It essentially locks every action you've applied to a track (and perhaps even quietly renders them to temp WAVs) in order to free up computing power.
    - thirdsun 13y ago
      Of course I know about freezing, but low latency mode just bypassed several resource heavy effects/instruments with the click of a button - no rendering time, or (un)freezing required. It worked very well.
retrogradeorbit 13y ago
I've used a lot of DAWs. Namely Logic, Sonar, Nuendo, Protools, Reason, Ableton, FLStudio and Reaper. And my conclusion is that Reaper is by far the best. Your opinion may be different, but give it a try. It has a free trial period and the full version is very cost effective. Add in the SWS extensions and the scripting support (I'm using python) and it becomes very powerful. Put the House of White Tie skin on it, add in some reamote slaves and combine with the fact that it is rock solid and never crashes... and you have, IMHO, what is currently the worlds best DAW.
- timdorr 13y ago
  And for those wondering about Reaper, it's from Winamp creator Justin Frankel. Dude makes some awesome software.
- marknutter 13y ago
  Could you elaborate a bit on what you can do with scripting in Reaper? That sounds very interesting.
  - retrogradeorbit 13y ago
    You can use it for all kinds of things. I use it for automating repetitive UI tasks. Say, taking a high-hat track, finding a high-hat transient, splitting all the drum tracks on that point, grouping those drums takes into a group for editing and moving onto the next transient. That's a bit derived, but anywhere where you find yourself manually repeating UI actions over and over again, you can save yourself hours by scripting it. You can save your scripts as actions and then even bind them to a key.
- ascendant2323 13y ago
  As a Cubase user who generally likes Cubase, but is considering switching to Ableton for the primary purpose of using Macro controls... would Reaper be likely to meet me needs? Specifically, I'm talking about having one "knob" or control that controls multiple parameters across multiple VSTs, with varying ranges. Can Reaper do that? The fact that Ableton can, and Cubase can't, is pretty much the only reason I'm thinking of switching.
louthy 13y ago
I've always thought the Ableton sound engine was pretty average compared to Logic. Ableton has always felt a bit muddy in its summing (IMHO!).
- cageface 13y ago
  Ableton's summing is completely transparent, as numerous tests have demonstrated. It's really just basic float math. Ableton's reputation for muddy sound has a lot more to do with somewhat mediocre stock effects plugins and the audio stretching algorithms.
abruzzi 13y ago
The one thing that has always kept me from Live (and this probably applies to .001% of DAW users) is last I checked it doesn't support score based composition. To me the easiest way to visualize my music is good old-fashioned 350 year old notation. My process is to compose by dropping notes on a staff, then either tweak the MIDI (to sound less mechanical) or re-record tracks live, after the composition phase has completed. In the past I have found three apps that handle this well: older versions of Cakewalk on windows, Opcode's Studio Vision Pro (tragically murdered by Gibson--something I'll never forgive them for) and Logic. I tried Digital Performer, and could never get the hang of their score view. I've also tried composing in Finale, which has great note entry, but lack anything further. I'm hoping that LPX doesn't munge the note entry too bad.

dmmalam 13y ago

Is this fully cocoafied like FCPX?

mhax 13y ago

The $199.99 price tag is a surprise. Could anyone speculate as to why they'd be pitching it this low, given the price of competitors products?

objclxt 13y ago
I'm pretty sure Logic has been $199 since 2011, when it went from retail box to app store download.
cpenner461 13y ago
I think Logic Pro has been at that price point for a year or two? But yeah definitely a lot cheaper than some of the competitors.
egads 13y ago
Logic 9 was also $199. There's also no upgrade pricing, so even though I just bought Logic 9 six months ago, the relatively low price point makes it a LOT more likely that I'll upgrade.
- dirkk0 13y ago
  You mean - as a Logic user I have to re-buy it?
jeremymcanally 13y ago
Leaves you more money to buy that shiny new Mac Pro to run it on. :)
- wmeredith 13y ago
  This, or something close to it, is surely the reason. Everything Apple does can be traced to a motivation to sell more hardware. (e.g. iTunes, App Store, iWork, Apple Maps, etc...) Hardware and the OS are their secret sauce, commoditizing everything else (applications, services, content) is in their best interest.
tazjin 13y ago

Roboprog 13y ago

Do the pitch bend and modulation wheel controls (via MIDI) actually do anything with most of the synth sounds? I've only just started tinkering with the "little brother" Garage Band program, but I was disappointed how bad support was for the pitch bend wheel from my keyboard into the supplied patches. (using pitch bend would cause secondary "note on" events which never got a "note off")

lewispollard 13y ago
They do, and they're also fully assignable to whatever params you want to adjust.
icarus_drowning 13y ago
Yes, they almost always control something important. In VST/AU instruments they're often assigned to crossfade volume so that you get a natural tone colour change across the dynamic range.

lewispollard 13y ago

'Modern' interface a little extra Melodyne-like functionality with flex pitch, everything else just seems like it was already there but is now easier to access (ie arpeggiator without having to use the environment window)... Am I missing anything major?

icarus_drowning 13y ago
The drum stuff seems new, but at first glance looks quite gimmicky. As a professional composer, the last thing I want to see is a picture of a drumkit and various performers in the middle of my DAW interface.
- lewispollard 13y ago
  Yeah, that's what I mean - we already have the ability to easily create drum kits in Ultrabeat, that just seems like a simple interface for new users. Not sure if it's worth upgrading, personally.
williamcotton 13y ago
And it looks like the finally removed the Environment completely! [EDIT] Nope, the Environment is still there, my bad!
droithomme 13y ago
You can write MIDI processing plugins using Javascript, that's pretty big. And most everything is now pushed to the iPad for touch editing.
- lewispollard 13y ago
  The Javascript thing is pretty cool, I missed that!

cpenner461 13y ago

As mentioned in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052122) I've been considering getting a DAW to hobby shop around with. I've lightly dabbled with several over the years, and am very comfortable on my actual instrument, but am a bit overwhelmed when I look at some of these for doing anything other than just recording and basic mixing/editing (would be nice to build some background/accompanying tracks from some of the synths etc). I think I just need to pick one and dive in to figure out how it all works - are there any resources anyone here can recommend for doing just that? Are the provided tutorials from the DAW vendors sufficient?

oatmealsnap 13y ago
A more simple version would be Garage Band. Would that suffice for your needs?
- cpenner461 13y ago
  Yeah, Garage Band is probably the one I've played with the most. I envision myself as a "power user" for most things though (perhaps falsely so!) so I'd like to try something more advanced.
dankoss 13y ago
Do you have a Mac or an iPad? If so I'd recommend Garageband as an easy place to start, and there are plenty of tutorials available for it.
tuzemec 13y ago
I can recommend Studio One: http://studioone.presonus.com/ http://studioone.presonus.com/ It have fully functional trial and kinda flexible pricing model. I've switched to it from Cubase year ago and I don't look back.
OMBUG 13y ago
If you're looking to get into it, but reluctant to spend $200 off the bat, I'd recommend taking a look at REAPER (www.reaper.fm) - it's significantly cheaper ($60) and the only area it's really lacking compared to Logic and the like is the bundled samples/synths.

jasonlingx 13y ago

Finally! :)

zefhous 13y ago

One of the drummer demos is very reminiscent of "A Sorta Fairytale" by Tori Amos: http://cl.ly/163g410m402w http://cl.ly/163g410m402w Just a tad faster and the kick is more busy, but very much the same feel.

kunai 13y ago

For all the talk about how Apple hates skeuomorphism, when I got to this part I started wondering if I was looking at an April Fools' joke: http://imagebin.org/264732 http://imagebin.org/264732

glasshead969 13y ago
It will be interesting how they will redesign GarageBand for iPad when iOS 7 comes out.
icefox 13y ago
Is the ipad "pairing" a new feature or an old one? "The Logic Remote app lets you wirelessly pair your Mac and your iPad — giving you the freedom to control Logic Pro from anywhere in the room." Having audio buttons I push with the mouse always seemed silly, but when I get to use my fingers it seems at least not as bad.
calinet6 13y ago
It would be very poignant of you to point that out if the interface was not trying to emulate famous and well-known real-world objects. Music people eat that up. It's entirely the right choice, and the rest of the interface is clean. There are no problems here, just good design overall it seems.
- wwweston 13y ago
  > There are no problems here Speaking as a longtime user of both physical audio gear and audio software (not to mention one of the "music people"), I think there is a big problem: knobs. Knobs don't translate well to the screen. It's hard to do a twisting motion with the mouse or a finger on a touch screen. So a lot of programs just make them a kind of compact slider/fader -- you move the mouse up and down, and the knob turns. This is an interaction that can have some problematic interactions with scrolling and/or screen real-estate availability even after you've figured out how this works. And it's not exactly intuitive. And there's often just better ways to do things. For example, I'd be happy if I never saw another EQ knob again in software -- being able to visualize/tweak a spectrum envelope is a clear winner over having to twiddle knobs. Or heck, I'd rather have MAX or pd's box-value compact faders that I can enter values into (along with sliding the mouse up and down) than knobs. I know the familiar is often fun and feels accessible, I even know there are sometimes where the compact-fader thing is helpful. I just think knobs are way over used in software and it is a problem.

bsaul 13y ago

The price tag really reflects that the music industry is the poorest of all creative industries (aka video, photo, 3D and web). When i think about all the genius algorithms and technologies that products like Ableton or logic Pro ship it really saddens me.

deleted 13y ago
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calinet6 13y ago
As with many of Apple's recent price drops (OSX, iWork, etc. etc.) I think it's a highly strategic and intentional move, not reflective of the greater market, but showing that Apple is enabling the larger success of their brand by enabling more people to purchase and use these pro apps at a lower price point. Plus, it will sell Macs, both laptops and Mac Pros. Smart.
- gamegod 13y ago
  This strategy benefits Apple, but screws over independent software developers/vendors. Look at the top 10 apps in the Mac App Store. That list is always dominated by Apple's applications like Logic and iWork because of this pricing strategy. Nobody else can afford to sell a DAW for $200 and make money. IMHO it's some kind of anti-competitiveness but I don't know if there's a term for it. Maybe it's just a fact of life when Apple owns and controls the entire software/hardware ecosystem.
  - snom380 13y ago
    Of course others can afford it. Whether they want to is another matter, but other companies like Propellerheads make lots of money selling software in the same price range. Also, don't forget that most of the Apple Pro Apps came about because pretty much none of the creative market vendors were initially on board with OSX, that only happened later when they saw OSX grow.
  - dorkrawk 13y ago
    That's not totally true. I've heard from several professional musicians who use Reaper ( http://www.reaper.fm/ http://www.reaper.fm/ ) and it sells for $225.

NamTaf 13y ago

For a company that just threw out skeuomorphism as a design principle, the amount of drumkit, pedal, amp and mixing deck images this thing has is surprising. The pitch correction stuff is cool - I dreamed of that sort of stuff a while ago, but never made any attempt to try to work out how it'd work. I wonder how it works with voices and the like, as opposed to string instruments.

S_A_P 13y ago
Well Pro Apps are kind of an exception as you usually are trying to emulate the exact properties of very specific hardware. Amp and synthesizer simulators seem more real if you have an accurate UI analog to the real hardware.
- laumars 13y ago
  Not exactly. Sadly this is one of those instances where a concise point isn't an accurate one. Sequencers (Logic Pro, Cubase, etc) were originally built to work along side classic studio hardware. And while more and more studios these days go all software, the sequencer paradigm has stuck because it largely works. You're also right that many soft-synths / virtual instruments are there to emulate real hardware, but there's also plugins like tone generators which are quite a departure from the classic studio paradigm. Aside sequencers, you can get other types of DAWs like trackers which, trigger digital audio projects like one would with a sequencer; except trackers have a completely digital approach (watching a tracker play is more akin to watching a hex dump scroll down a terminal emulator than watching waveforms scroll horizontally across a sequencer). Then there's DAWs based around programming which are as far removed from skeuomorphism as you can get. But those are very much a niche product. Also let's not forget that the old studios wouldn't have had anything akin to modern audio editors (Soundforge, Audacity, etc). That's a very modern concept. However because we have adopted the old play/stop symbols that have existed on audio hardware for decades, and because oscilloscopes have made us very aware of waveforms, audio editors often look skeuomorphic even when they're really not (or perhaps it makes more sense to say that they are skeuomorphic, but not out of design - out of necessity due to sound being a wave).

caplingerc 13y ago

"Retro Synth. Far-out sounds. Not so far away." hopefully this means they got rid of the ridiculously over-complicated extraterrestrial-looking synth interfaces in favor of something that actually makes sense.

adamnemecek 13y ago
Yeah. Considering how much Apple prides itself on good UI design, I have no clue how ES2 happened.
- splicer 13y ago
  It's by Emagic, not Apple. It used to be available as a separate product: http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMAESC http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMAESC
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    It's a part of an Apple product. Apple does not make their laptops either yet you consider elements of the computer design to be from Apple.
    - splicer 13y ago
      I was referring to the fact that ES2 was designed before Apple acquired Emagic.

ssharp 13y ago

I think this is going to push me fully over the edge to record my non-EDM music on the Mac. I had been teetering between FL Studio & Sonar on Windows and various OSX-based DAWs for this purpose and am ready to settle on something permanent. Logic adoption has been growing substantially and I feel 100% safe jumping head-first into the Logic ecosystem. In general, I've been a Mac user for everything but production for over a decade and am so sick of keeping a Windows machine running for sake of production. I don't think I could switch over for EDM/hip-hop though, as my workflow is so engrained in FL Studio and I use so many advanced controls and features.

leviathant 13y ago
Curious, have you ever considered Reaper? I'm considering making the jump over the course of the next year or so (switching DAWs is such a pain).
- ssharp 13y ago
  I've never heard of Reaper -- I'll have to look into it! Switching is a serious pain, especially when music is a free-time hobby and you want to spend that time actually creating and not learning new tools and workflows.
initself 13y ago
I moved from PCs to recording non-EDM music on Logic in 2009. It's perfect.

enen 13y ago

Holy crap... my upgrade from Live 8 to Live 9 costs 250 euro. And this is 200 bucks. I wish I was not so deeply in love with Ableton so I could move to Logic.

wavesounds 13y ago

Has anyone tried using Github to manage and share a Logic Pro project? I work on music with someone 300 miles away and I'd love to have the power of git. Right now were both using different DAWs and export audio to dropbox. This release of Logic looks great and my partner is already using Logic so if I switch over and implemented git we could ideally be working off the same files all the time with version tracking, backups and branches. I could see it potentially being very large though and merging audio files probably wouldn't be possible so maybe this is something that still needs to be built?

deleted 13y ago
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arielpts 13y ago
I'm assuming that the Logic Pro files are binary, not text, this link may provide useful information: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/104453/version-control-for-binaries http://stackoverflow.com/questions/104453/version-control-fo...
deleted 13y ago
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Griever 13y ago
I've actually been storing my Logic projects on GitHub for a while. It works pretty well for the most part, but I do run into some issues when dealing with the size of the files. Perhaps Logic X shrinks them down in size a bit in comparison to Logic 9, but I doubt it. Here's the repo if you are interested: https://github.com/jpsullivan/LogicProjects https://github.com/jpsullivan/LogicProjects One day I'd really like to make an open source album that people could fork to remix entirely new sounds. It'd also be nice to get some people talking about best practices when mixing. Perhaps a Logic Bootstrap if you will.
- wavesounds 13y ago
  I was also thinking about how cool open source albums would be! Your 'band' could now be 100 different people all spread out around the world. Then perhaps instead of an album being 'done' we'll just release v1.0.

joeblau 13y ago

This looks great. The pitch correction tools are gonna make it a lot easier for that pop singers to sound great even if they aren't. I also REALLY like the iPad remote feature.

graublau 13y ago

Good thing I bought Logic 9 four weeks ago...

adamnemecek 13y ago
Same here. I'm kind of pissed. I wonder whether I should try contacting Apple but I'm pretty sure that they won't give a shit.
Zoepfli 13y ago
So what's the upgrade policy? I suppose since the Mac App Store doesn't support paid upgrades, everybody gets the new version for free?
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  Nope. Everybody has to pay $200.
  - Zoepfli 13y ago
    Interesting. As far as I remember, for the past 3 years, every app put into those stores by Apple themselves received unlimited upgrades. Everybody wanted to do paid upgrade, pressuring Apple into adding some paid upgrade feature into the store. Apple always declined, saying "do as we do, support unlimited upgrades, you'll earn enough because the market is growing". Some devs did paid upgrades by creating a new app with a new name, creating some issues along the way (people that just bought the old version a day ago have no upgrade path etc.) Not idea. People guessed that Apple would add some "paid upgrade" feature once they needed it themselves. Now Apple decided for the first time to create a paid upgrade, and apparently they - just created a new app... Apple could have done better here.
    - adamnemecek 13y ago
      I believe that this is a new item though. For example, usually you can see the reviews for the previous versions in the app store but there are no reviews for Logic X.

crucialfelix 13y ago

they should just call it Garage Band Pro now. this used to be pro software but they've really killed off their professional users.

baddox 13y ago
I have never used any version of Logic, but the reviews I have read are all saying that none of the power features have been removed. The Macworld review is titled "Logic Pro X loses none of its power, gains great new features" [0]. The Loop even explicitly says "Rumors have circulated for a long time that Logic Pro was going to be discontinued or that it was going to be reincarnated as some sort of 'GarageBand Pro.' ... this is far from a GarageBand knockoff. This is the same professional digital audio workstation software that we’ve used for years, only better" [1]. And again, macProVideo says "many people feared Logic would be 'Dumbed-down' into a 'LogicBand / GarageBand Pro,' ... I'm pleased to report, it's the same Logic you know and love, but with a fantastic facelift and some brilliant new features." [2] [0] http://www.macworld.com/article/2044283/logic-pro-x-loses-none-of-its-power-gains-great-new-features.html http://www.macworld.com/article/2044283/logic-pro-x-loses-no... [1] http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/07/16/review-logic-pro-x/ http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/07/16/review-logic-pro-x/ [2] http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/review-2/logic-pro-x-review-top-5-new-features?utm_source=hubrss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=logic-pro-x-review-top-5-new-features http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/review-2/logic-pro-x-review-t...
- crucialfelix 13y ago
  I've used logic extensively since 1991 on the Atari. I spoke with two other professional users last night and they agreed. Reviews not withstanding, those of us who were power users feel cheated. There were strong rumors that this version was never even going to come out and that the dev team had been reduced.

brunorsini 13y ago

This took forever... I'm impressed by the many updates but think I might just stick to Pro Tools. Switching DAWs is a bit like switching programming languages, in a sense, huge time cost. The built-in iPad remote control is cool though. Neyrinck makes a good one for Pro Tools, however: http://www.neyrinck.com/v-control-pro http://www.neyrinck.com/v-control-pro

stephth 13y ago

Exciting addition, almost missed it: Scripter Extensible plug-in that can process or generate MIDI data using standard JavaScript.

jianshen 13y ago
I know this is a niche feature but I think it's an important differentiator (and something that I love After Effects for). I'm probably the only person who's excited to code up my own Arpeggiators and Rhythm pattern generators...
- mitchty 13y ago
  I don't even know what an Arpeggiator is, sounds cool though.
  - widdershins 13y ago
    If you play a chord into an arpeggiator, it... well, it arpeggiates it. In other words, it plays each note of the chord individually in a particular rhythm (e.g. 16th notes) in a particular pattern (e.g. up/down, up, random). Very, very common in electronic music.
    - mitchty 13y ago
      Cool I had no idea, I'm about as musical as... umm, yeah i've got no analogue. Does it get scaled in specific patterns or is random ok?
      - eropple 13y ago
        Patterns, random, fast, short, whatever. Most packaged arpeggiators have all sorts of knobs to twist.
georgecalm 13y ago
This caught me by surprise too while looking through the midi fx drop down. Got it to repeat the note I play in a nice (not quite musical yet) pattern. Pretty excitig! I'd love to hear ideas for creative uses of this thing apart from making clever arps.

andyfleming 13y ago

Aside from all of issues (good and bad) surrounding design, features, pricing, etc, I'm just glad to see that Apple is still paying attention to the pro users.

MrGando 13y ago

I hope this doesn't result in another Final Cut Pro X, in that case, everyone back to Pro Tools or whatever alternatives are available.

akrs 13y ago

Check out Blend.io. Its a betaworks-studio product for open-source, cross-geo music collaboration. It currently supports Ableton Live and Maschine but support for other DAWs (including Logic) is coming soon.

akrs 13y ago
Btw, Blend is still in private beta but you can use the invite code: EARLYACCESS to sign up now.

mambodog 13y ago

I've been a long time Logic Pro user. Since the updates to Logic slowed to a trickle I've also been using Ableton Live a fair bit. I've always appreciated Logic's clean, well laid out interface (as opposed to say, Cubase) and its general sense of respect for the intelligence of its users. Unfortunately it seems Apple has gone in the direction of Garageband-ifiyng Logic; pushing it towards amateurs who want to easily piece together their musical ideas from other people's sounds. The interface is dominated by the flashy new features such as the 'Drummer' and 'Drum Kit Designer' which effectively let you combine a limited set of preset drum sounds with a limited set of preset drumming styles. The result is a similar 'toy' feel to that of Garageband. Professional tools for creativity afford the user the ability to manipulate, combine and repurpose them in as much depth and complexity as user can manage, so that they may seek out new forms, rather than just creating pastiche rehashes of existing ideas. It is apparent from the direction Logic has taken that it is no longer aimed at the professional market, but rather more to the 'Prosumer' category, who aspire to be 'Pro', but who still need a lot of hand-holding. The most displeasing change I've noticed so far is that the 'bypass' button on each instrument and effect, which neatly fitted in with Logic's formerly clean and understated visual style, has now been replaced with a large glowing on/off 'light'. It is succinctly represents all of the changes across the application which discard neat and elegant design for absolute naive ease of use. I have a feeling I'll be using Ableton more from now on.

bti 13y ago
What kind of music do you make? I've been wanting to try Ableton out but it kind of looks geared toward working with samples and MIDI. I mostly record guitars and all my instruments live with a mic. Is Ableton appropriate for recording and mixing recorded music? Would you say it is as powerful as Logic Pro 9 (my primary DAW)?
- ThomPete 13y ago
  A friend of mine did the music & soundfx for FarCry 1 and the latest Hitman game. He's used bot protools and logic but used Ableton for Hitman. So yes you can do the same with ableton.
- 13y ago

securingsincity 13y ago

For the price i would say this is a pretty ok deal. the other Digital Audio workstations(DAWs) offer a lot of the same features. I was a protools engineer for a while and some of the things they are touting are far from new and protools usually lagged behind sonar and cubase in raw feature set. I have been punting on upgrading from protools 7.4(5+ years) and m-audio delta 1010lt and 44 for a very long time (10 years). What I want to see is hardware that takes advantage of the huge throughput of thunderbolt or usb3, that allows for higher quality audio and many ins and outs. as far as software Reaper - i havent used it in a year or so - for the price is the best DAW on the market no question.

kdot 13y ago

The most important feature for me is Retina support, no other DAW has been updated for Retina displays yet.

imissmyjuno 13y ago

For me, the most interesting part is the iPad remote. Looks like Apple is getting into distributed interfaces.