Logic X first weeks impressions, the facts and the niggles...

Intro

So why am I writing a blog post on exactly the same topic you can currently find all over the pro audio forums at the moment? As someone who works in logic on a daily basis, over the last week, I have been playing with X while still keeping 9 alongside. I have been asked atleast once a day since it came out what my opinions on it are by friends and I keep giving stock answers. It appears that theres some mis information on the web as well as general apple haters  and very quickly written posts by pro audio websites, just so they have an article on *the new shiny thing!* with no real thought and clearly not having been written by someone who actually uses it. 

So Logic X arrived and I for one was excited. It was kind of inevitable, apple had to revitalise Logic to go along with the re vamped Final cut Pro X for the new mac pro (dustbin) launching later this year, so they can launch it with a rather gorgeous and swanky suite of in house professional grade applications.

Although I don't really use Final Cut I have heard some people loving what apple did and some people thinking they dulled it down. This was something many people in the online community including me were concerned may happen to Logic X but honestly with apple being the market leader in dulled down DAW's (garageband) they would have been idiots to destroy a professional class DAW by stripping it bare.

Now since its release there have been a lot of people on the land of mis information that is the interwebs branding  Logic X as "garage band pro" and spreading generally ludicrous tripe about it no longer being a pro app, to me it appears these people are generally 'apple haters' who have never opened logic other than to play once or twice, as a lot of the posts with such views are very vague, minimalist and appear to be the general trolling hatred the internet and pro audio communities seem to be full off :(

The Facts

Let me get one thing very clear. NOTHING, apart from 32 bit plugins, have been removed from logic X compared to 9. So really logic X is only full of improvements and changes, you can choose to use them and treat them as improvements or whine like a child without any real reason, telling stories of how wonderful it used to be... (If you had Logic 9 previously installed it will keep your presets and a few buttons in the same place, also make sure you tick all the advanced features in settings on)

It was inevitable  that 32 bit plugins would die a death, the 32 bit bridge in logic 9 was an absolute pain and I hated having to use more than a couple instances of 32 bit plugins. If you have some lovely old 32 bit plugins that are obviously not going to be re coded to 64 bit like the old powercore stuff etc I suggest you look at this link that details a number of work arounds ranging from free to a few hundred pounds. 

The new look is gorgeous... if you prefer the aesthetics of logic 9 you may need your head examined. It brings X it in line with Final Cut X, some of the darker pages in Aperture and, dare I mention it, garageband.

Drummer is Brilliant. At first it seems a little bit simplistic, as opposed to programming drums from scratch, but if you are woking with a session drummer on an original song most of the controls are pretty much the phrases you would use as a producer to get a drummer to play what you want. 

First off you would choose the right drummer for the style of session (you have the option of 15 individual drummers in 4 styles) then you might ask...

"In this section could you play just Kick Tom/Kick snare/KSH" 

"Could you play that half/double time" 

"more/less fills in that section" 

"could you play that harder/softer" 

"Simpler/more complex" 

"swing it more" 

"Can you follow what X instrument is doing"

These are all common requests we might make of a session drummer and that is what drummer does. Something that apple hasn't massively publicised (probably due to the fact they want you to use their library recorded by Bob Clearmountain among others!) once you have created a pattern you like you can right click and convert to midi and then drag it onto your favourite kontakt kit or whatever floats your boat!

Track stacks and their implementation is great and definitely speeds up the workflow. I really like the summing stack idea saves a lot of time if you are working creatively and not from a template with busses set up. 

Choosing one track as the groove master is a great idea and seems to work pretty well.

The mixer window is beautiful and it seems a lot better than the old one, I like how they have implemented a number of things and tried to make the work flow more dynamic. I imagine the new compression meter next to the old EQ curve may help those who love to sidechain everything keep an eye on their mix.

The new retro synth is a great addition to logics already powerful synthesiser collection and brings something new to the pack. I have played around with it and it holds its own against offerings from Arturia and TAL.

The Midi plugins are great and can spark some really great musical ideas. The arpeggiator is a given but some of the more adventurous ones, especially the script writer, might cause you to fiddle around a bit too much rather than compose/work but its all fun. 

Flex Pitch is great, especially in the advanced view with the 6 little dots around the note, its a much faster workflow than the melodyne editor plugin having to right click and fiddle to change tool every few seconds.

Smart controls seem cool but I honestly haven't really used it and it hasn't sparked my interest. 

The logic remote app is insanely cool, an iPad is now on my shopping list. It offers a lot of the features you would find on the Euphonix MC mix with the shortcuts and the mixer page, the keyboard page per instrument is great and the scale player thing is a great idea when playing on an Ipad. 

My Niggles

In this new beautiful audio world that logic X now is, pressing Cmd8 and bringing up the audio environment view almost gave me a heart attack... I think maybe the designer of the new mixer view thought leaving it looking worse than it did in 9 might force you to use his pretty new mixer? It is an absolute mess and if apple don't sort it in 10.1 I will be a bit annoyed.

Flex Pitch launching as only monophonic hasn't killed the need for melodyne editor, I think the DNA algorithm is probably an incredibly hard one to emulate or improve on and I don't think Celemony plan on licensing it to apple after all the work they have done with Presonus's Studio One and their new ARA plugin format. I'm not quite convinced that flex pitch sonically beats it yet on mono sources although I haven't spent enough time playing and testing it, I can say that the design of the workflow is much better though.

I got a bit upset when I realised the caps lock keyboard was no longer there, after doing this though I discovered that they had actually improved it (I think stealing it from main stage) and called it "musical typing" so I assigned it to a keyboard shortcut and actually prefer it to the old one.

I was a bit upset that they changed the layout of the transport bars information panel especially the midi in/out information but soon realised clicking the left side of the screen gave me a number of options to change the display. Clicking beats & project soon set it right again!

Another niggle I had is that while teaching a lesson this week with a new student who had just downloaded Logic X cleanly to learn from scratch some of the key commands were different, not custom controls, just odd ones. For example m is still mute like it always was but if you go into the piano roll and select a few midi notes and hit m it wouldn't mute them, instead it would just mute the whole region back in the arrange page that I didn't have selected, but on my mac Logic X had sensed I was a logic 9 user and imported my old key commands, as well as my presets etc. This may not effect many people, as the old will keep the old commands and the new the new but as a teacher it didnt half irritate me in the middle of a lesson that it wouldn't work, and it now means my students will either need my key map or I cant really teach them shortcuts. 

These last 3 may not seem really niggles as I managed to solve them with no real issue but none of the solutions came from a logic/apple document or website even though while the 30Gb of downloads came down I read the document apple suggested I read on changes between 9 and X which just seemed like a salesman patting you on the back after you have already handed him your money, it was just showing off the new features that are shown on every advert and all over the release. They leave out the day to day details that might actually make a user feel more at home. I also just think its good practice to document and inform users of all changes in an update/revision and make that information easily available.

As much as the Ipad app is cool I cant help but think surely you could have offered a hands on GUI for at least their own plugins. I can get something that does that and all 3rd party plugins already on the app store, although its £49 ish  http://www.neyrinck.com/v-control-pro

I have heard that it also doesn't play well with hackintosh's and appears on some systems to cause crashes/be a little unresponsive. I haven't really noticed anything major but I do think it uses more ram than 9 would on the same session. As far as I can report, on a stable up to date mac, with everything set up properly, it works fine. 

My Opinions

The new ergonomic, similar looking interface and smart controls do make it easier than ever for garageband users to jump to Logic but to quote Stan Lee/Uncle Ben/The spiderman movie (depending on your geek levels) "with great power, comes great responsibility". Logic is a powerful beast and the number of projects I have seen/helped work on, as a music tech teacher and as a producer being handed  rough demos, have proven, at least to me, that not many people really know what they are doing with it. So I don't think those two changes will really spawn millions of people creating amazing new hit tracks with garageband pro, like the internet would lead you to believe. 

Logic X is definitely an improvement over 9 no questions asked. Logic 9 being 64 bit made both pro tools 9/10 look a little pathetic, with 11 out now avid have finally caught up with every other DAW on the market!  I personally think the improvements in Logic X help fend it off from the other new DAWs yapping at its heels (reaper, studio one etc) but still the best DAW will always be the one that suits your workflow and the one you have the most experience in.

I'm glad that they haven't dulled it, I like the new features but once you get past the aesthetic changes and learn to navigate through it all again I almost feel like apple, a company who are use to re inventing the wheel, might have been playing it a little safe after the uproar on the final cut X update... either way I like it.

Writing Playlist
Frost* (Milliontown & Experiments in Mass Appeal)