Planewalker .:.:. Waveform Wizardry

Yesterday Apple announced a new version of Logic Studio, the music production suite favored by music producers of all kinds, inculding yours truly. The new version includes Logic Pro 9, MainStage 2, Soundtrack Pro 3, Compressor 3.5, WaveBurner 1.6, and QuickTime 7 Pro. This update presents a promising step forward for the software suite, which is already perhaps the most feature-rich, complete, versatile and cost-effective music production software solution. There’s no question that the $499 asking price is more than worth it for newcomers, but is it worth the $199 upgrade price tag for current users?

Well, the jury’s still out, but an early report from one brave paying public beta tester looked promising. This reviewer on the Apple Store website reported that Logic Pro 9 was faster and more stable, but curiously the review has since been pulled from the site. The truth is that even if anyone has managed to actually get their hands on a copy yet, one day is hardly enough time to really evaluate the new package. It will take at least a week or two, probably closer to a month, before any credible review will surface. So all that reamins to do is to talk about the new features, which can be read about on Apple’s website, but which are frankly a bit Apple-hyped as usual. I’ve taken the time to look them over and distill them here for you, so you can get an idea of what this update means without having to crawl through reams of over-hyped Apple lingo designed to sell you.

Apple Takes a Cue From Ableton

The key new feature for Logic Pro 9 is called Flex Time, which will supposedly allow for audio time stretching in a far more versatile way, a la Ableton Live. Live users have long enjoyed the ability to stretch certain parts of an audio file differently with warp markers, whereas Logic up to version 8 provided quite limited time-stretching functionality that is bogged down by dialog boxes and too many options, making it fairly useless compared to Live’s warp markers.

The new Flex Time engine provides automatic audio quantization, which can adjust the timing of a sloppy performance with a few clicks to make it sound tighter. It will finally allow global manipulation of project tempo independent of pitch, as well as turntable-style stops, starts and scratching type effects controlled via automation! Another promising feature is the ability to quickly slice audio loops into MIDI-mapped sample sequences, similar to REX files used by Propellerhead’s Reason and Recycle applications. Here Apple takes another cue from Ableton. Live has been able to create REX-like files this way since Live 7 released well over a year and a half ago. Nevertheless, it will be nice not to have to go into Ableton just to do this sort of thing. It looks like Apple is following suit to Ableton’s innovation in this department. It’s about time Apple!

A Treat For Guitarists

While the new 2009 incarnation of Logic Studio does not provide ANY new software instruments or effect plug-ins aside from the looper (this is the biggest disappointment for me), it does feature Amp Designer, a new guitar amp simulation suite that promises to put Logic Studio on par with Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Guitarists can now combine a huge array of cabinets and amplifiers, as well as create their own unique pedalboards with cute little virutal audio effect pedal graphics. These pedals will no doubt find their way into creative use on non-guitar tracks, so technically Logic Pro 9 does include some new effects.

The Nice Little Touches

A few smaller, yet potentially workflow-changing features have also been touted in the new release of Logic Pro 9. These include Bounce In-Place, Expanded Take Folder Editing and Selective Track Import.

Bounce In-Place allows for selective bouncing of parts of audio regions, meaning you can bounce selections of a region instead of being tied to the master output. And it looks as though you don’t have to go find and re-import the bounced file either, which was such a major pain before. For reversing sounds, this will be a great boon. It will provide similar functionality to Ableton’s “Flatten” function.

Expanded Take Folder Editing allows you to copy, paste, move and otherwise tweak regions within a take folder. In Logic Pro 8, take folders were frozen, meaning that you could not move the regions within them around or alter them in any way after you had compressed them into a take folder. This will be great for people who have to go through a lot of takes while recording, which is most of us.

Selective Track Import will allow you to import single tracks from other projects, which will make remixing Logic projects much easier. In Logic Pro 8, you had to actually open both projects at the same time, then click and drag regions from one project to another. Each time you selected the inactive project, Logic would have to load all the sampled instruments and plug-ins. Even one instance of Kontakt 3 in the project could cause minutes of waiting while switching back and forth between projects. Even then, clicking and dragging did not guarantee the imported region would be the correct tempo. Now, it should work fast and properly.

MainStage Is Growing Up

Apple’s MainStage application has been touted by Apple before as the ultimate solution for live performance. It is true that MainStage has always been good for live keyboard players, allowing layering of Plug-Ins much like Native Instruments’ Kore software without being a plug-in itself. But compared to the versatility of Ableton Live, it has been a joke for almost every other kind of user, with no ability to play backing tracks, loop recordings, or really do much else aside from run an effects chain or group of synthesizers.

MainStage 2 promises to change all of that. While the ability to play backing tracks is still not nearly as full featured as Ableton Live with its two views and back-to arrange button, it can at least provide live looping and multi-track playback abilities, some of which may work better for a simple live setup than Ableton will. For example, it touts a feature whereby you can set cue markers in your backing track and use a single footswitch to advance to the next marker. This will allow a performer to determine when the track will advance without having to assign a separate footswtich to every cue point, which is how it currently has to be done in Ableton Live.

Moreover, MainStage 2 claims full ReWire support! If this is accurate (meaning host AND client, audio AND MIDI), you will be able to run MainStage through the Ableton Live mixer, and theoretically trigger Logic Instruments like Sculpture and Ultrabeat from Ableton Live, as well as Ableton Live instruments and effects in MainStage!

The Extra Apps

As much as Logic Pro 9 is the star of this show, Logic Studio is really a complete application suite, which means that it includes some great supporting software you may not even know is there.

The most overlooked piece of software in the suite is Compressor 3.5, which is capable of doing massive batch parallel processing and transcoding of both audio and video files. Since QuickTime Pro 7 is also included, this means you can convert massive amounts of audio and video files from almost any format to any other format. This is a godsend if you are authoring media for different devices. While Compressor 3 can be buggy, when it works, it works great. Hopefully the new 3.5 version will improve its stability.

Waveburner is a full featured CD-mastering application that allows you to use Logic’s effects and other 3rd party plugins to author professional sounding CDs complete with CD-text. It is a very helpful application for DJs or anyone who wants to create a continuous mix with track markers in-between.

Soundtrack Pro 3 is a multi-channel audio application designed for putting music and sound effects into a movie. Since Logic Pro 9 features the ability to play back movies in sync with songs, you might wonder why you would want to use Soundtrack instead. The answer is that Soundtrack Pro has a lot of useful features for syncing dialogue and effects to changes in picture. If you work with Final Cut, or happen to be scoring for a Final Cut project, you can save a lot of time with these specialized features. If you’ve ever wanted to get into film scoring or any kind of film audio, you will probably find many movie-related tasks to be much easier with Soundtrack due to its streamlined interface and time-saving features.

Before You Upgrade

As exciting as all of this is, if your livelihood depends on Logic, it is important that you approach any major upgrade like this with caution. This means BACK UP YOUR WHOLE DRIVE before you install it. It is unknown how a new installation may effect your current installation, possibly rendering it useless. Thankfully, Apple’s Time Machine backup utility integrated with Leopard allows you to take a system snapshot that you can restore easily in case your shiny new Logic Studio turns out to function like another public beta test.

Filed under: Announcements
by planewalker