As expected, Apple moved its Logic Pro music production tool to the App Store. And the results are mostly what you’d expect. The biggest change is the price: Logic gets slashed to US$199.99, while MainStage gets a so-low-you-might-as-well-try-it $29.99 sticker price.

Wave editor Soundtrack Pro, removed from Final Cut Studio, is gone here, too. Lesser-known mastering tool WaveBurner gets the axe.

Logic Pro 9 is still Logic Pro 9. Today is a minor update that you can now download via the App Store if you choose. Logic Studio remains for sale through Apple in its boxed edition, but at two hundred bucks, the App Store version is the winner.

No Logic Pro X

If you were expecting Logic Pro X, my guess is, it’s just not done yet. I still expect the number ten to follow the number nine. (Amazing how that works.) I don’t expect Logic Pro X to produce the kind of disruption that Final Cut Pro X did, however. Logic already has a 64-bit infrastructure. Final Cut had an aging code base, deeply rooted in deprecated versions of QuickTime, that prompted Apple to do a ground-up rewrite. The initial results made people unusually unhappy, and perhaps justifiably so, but ground-up rewrites of software this complex tend to be ugly at first. There’s no reason to believe Logic will face a similar overhaul. Whatever Apple is doing, I’m in no rush; Logic is a deep program, and I’d rather wait for upgrades from everyone (note to all developers everywhere) than have serious production software rushed out before its time.

Logic Express is also, not surprisingly, eliminated. At $200, there just isn’t a spot for Express any more. And I’ve never been in love with these kind of product tiers; you’re constantly explaining to people whether they should get Express or Pro, as they desperately try to work out how “serious” they are in light of the products.

What is notable is MainStage: there are some welcome tweaks, and absurdly-cheap, standalone pricing that should get some attention.

Most importantly, $30 now gets you all of the instruments and effects from Logic in MainStage, including instruments like Sculpture.

MainStage

The real changes software-wise come in MainStage. For starters, if you don’t love Logic but want to try Apple’s live performance / instrument and effect rig, you can now do that. MainStage works standalone, and you even get all the Apple Loop sound content and sample-based instruments previously available in Logic Pro – Jam Packs and all, what once could have cost you hundreds of dollars is now thirty bucks. One thing I wondered about with the App Store was how Apple would handle distribution of all that content. They’ve thoughtfully allowed you to check off only the content you want to install, saving bandwidth and hard disk space if you don’t want everything.

All those instruments and effects: You also get, bundled into the package, an extensive collection of everything from guitar amps and stompboxes to the Ultrabeat drum machine to virtual instruments from analog to the unique physical-modeling Sculpture. Because MainStage supports ReWire, that means if you, say, love Ableton Live or Cubase more than Logic, but longed for some of those Apple instruments, you can now play with them in your DAW for thirty bucks without having to buy the whole Logic package. You’d just route audio straight into your DAW.

Check out the extensive list of instruments and effects on the MainStage product page. (They’re called “plug-ins,” but they can only be used in Logic and MainStage, not in other tools.)

For onstage or live studio use, MainStage also includes a looper, backing track player, and other useful tools.

MainStage 2.2 also delivers some new features for your $30. From the release notes, I spot a few highlights:

• Now takes “full advantage” of Macs with four or more processor cores
• New template picker, Assignments and Mappings view for streamlined screen and hardware control
• Bigger interface elements
• More MIDI control, SMF support for sending SysEx and other data when you make a patch change, block unwanted controller messages
• Support for: Akai MPK25, Akai MPK49, Alesis Q25, Korg nanoKey2, Korg nanoKontrol2, Korg nanoPad2, updated M-Audio Axiom and Oxygen models, Novation Nocturn 25

There are also some bug fixes and improved ReWire support.

None of this is really earth-shaking in itself – though it’s nice to see those patch change additions for people with hardware rigs. But the big news here is that, with MainStage unbundled from Logic, it’s in a whole new product category. It could be a viable option for Mac owners wanting to control plug-ins and hardware from a streamlined setup, even if they’re not Logic fans. And that could open MainStage to new audiences using other DAWs. Years ago, I reviewed a similar app, Rax, now marketed by Audiofile Engineering. (At the time, it was developed by Plasq, now better known for Skitch, which they just sold successfully to Evernote.) I was disappointed that no one really picked up on the app.

The idea is great: make a simple, straightforward app that gets you actually playing instruments on your computer with minimum fuss. It still seems like a great idea, and perhaps now the time is right. Rax/MainStage shootout, anyone?

Bottom Line

Sometimes, it’s news that something isn’t news. For all the rumors that the App Store transition was going to be a big deal, I think for Logic users, it’s probably not. It could be a more convenient way to distribute Apple’s software. And it sure makes those days of giant Logic boxes and blue Emagic copy protection dongles seem distant, huh? But I don’t think the question is whether competitors will go to the App Store, specifically. I think the question will be more generally, when will we cease to see boxes of nothing but software in stores? It seems stores may continue to carry hardware bundles, but that software will get delivered, you know, on the Internet.

Sure enough, rumors are surfacing saying as much. (I’ve gotten at least one email, secondhand – no, Apple, no Apple employee has said anything to me; if they had, I wouldn’t even think of posting this story). For instance:
Apple Moving Toward Release of Logic Pro X? [MacRumors]

Now, of course, what I’ve heard even more than rumors is users of Logic in an absolute panic that Apple will muck around with their product. Putting it diplomatically, feedback to Final Cut Pro X has not been overwhelmingly positive. I have no idea what the next version of Logic will look like, so it’s very possible Apple will indeed screw around with Logic in a way that makes its existing user base unhappy. But, since I feel free to speculate idly simply because I really, truly don’t know anything and thus can’t get anyone fired / violate any NDAs (again, Apple, please, please, please don’t hurt me), I’ll say this:

Assuming Apple is “running away from pro users” is probably wrong. This was a widespread reading of Final Cut Pro X. I think it’s fair to say Apple hoped their adjustments would attract new users put off by previous versions and other pro non-linear editors. Otherwise, though, I have to disagree. Apple’s pro user base is hugely profitable, in direct sales and high-margin, high-end Mac sales, and there are a lot of those users out there – I’ve sat with that team at Apple as they talked video pro sales numbers, for actual sales from pros, not even including pirated copies. (Anyone who thinks Apple likes to see their product pirated so they can sell more Mac hardware? Highly unlikely, that, too.) There’s a big difference between wanting to alienate your pro user base, and doing it inadvertently. I think Apple’s reputation is such that people have come to believe that everything they do is part of a grand plan, even when it’s not.

Developers want to make changes. Big changes don’t always work as expected, or work right away. Users are resistant to changes, and far more resistant the more the use of software is part of their pro, up-against-deadlines, demanding workflows. That’s the bottom line. I’m not going to be terribly complimentary here, though: I think the problem with Final Cut isn’t that it was designed for non-pro users, but that it wasn’t finished or fully fleshed-out. Enough has been said about that – see The Internet – but I can imagine anything similar in Logic would cause some (rightfully) unhappy users. And quality and implementation are everything; there’s a reason I gave Motion a positive review in Macworld, and you haven’t heard similar complaints about it, even though it uses some of the same UX paradigms and underlying engine. I hope future updates to Final Cut are more like that version of Motion in terms of user experience. (This is not a Final Cut review; that’d be glib. Suffice to say I tried Final Cut Pro X and decided to do editing in another program, and that I do appreciate some of what I believe Apple was trying to do, and that I do hope future versions are more successful. This is the reality of using pro tools.)

That said –

Apple is probably not overhauling Logic as thoroughly as Final Cut. Final Cut’s code base, as of Final Cut Pro 7, was not 64-bit and was dependent on deprecated video frameworks; it’s not unreasonable to assume that Apple felt they had to start over from scratch. Logic already has 64-bit support, and is already built atop parallel audio frameworks like Core Audio and Core MIDI that haven’t changed so radically. So while file management, save and undo, and other Lion-style features would likely call for changes, that doesn’t mean you’ll lose the old Logic, necessarily. And Logic has already undergone one Apple-administered UI overhaul, which was able to preserve the way Logic users work with the tool. Part of what’s admirable about Logic is its longevity, love it or hate it, so while a UI reskin is almost certainly in the works, that doesn’t mean Logic Pro X will be like Logic Studio X.

Apple will probably try to do Mac App Store distribution and take out some bundled apps. You don’t need rumors to figure this one out. App Store distribution? Almost certain. Unbundling tools like Soundtrack Pro or the rarely-used WaveBurner, each of which has robust competition from other developers? Certainly not unlikely. The interesting question here will be how Apple handles the sheer size of things like bundled audio content, and whether Logic’s support for plug-ins will mean either adjusting App Store rules, or whether Logic will get a special exception because it’s Apple (fully within their rights).

Apple probably won’t dump support for plug-ins. Apple continues to actively develop its Audio Unit plug-in format and push validation, and if they didn’t support plug-ins, they’d disrupt users and the entire vendor ecosystem. I’ll be stunned if that goes away. One thing they almost certainly will dump is technologies like Pro Tools interface compatibility – Avid has been moving toward Core Audio support, anyway – and possibly even ReWire. But while any change anywhere in a DAW will impact someone, neither of those would be likely to radically change user relationships to the tool.

Also, as a reader points out, Final Cut Pro X supports plug-ins.

The most interesting thing to me about all of this is whether the appearance of Logic on the Mac App Store, if it happens, will impact other audio apps. So far, it’s been a desert there, as I and some others (read: developers) predicted, partly because music software is so dependent on the plug-in ecosystem and sales to users through direct channels or music stores.

Additional evidence: GarageBand is already in the App Store, and supports plug-ins (AU). So the real question here is more the question of whether other hosts would try to / be allowed to follow the same model, and whether even plug-in distribution, using approved Apple frameworks, were allowed. (The former seems more likely than the latter: you can run a host without a plug-in, but not visa versa.)

What I’m interested in is whether other software follows suit at all. Aperture, Motion, and Final Cut haven’t necessarily produced an onslaught of other pro tools for visual Mac users – at least, not so many high-end or flagship tools, though there are many really useful smaller ones. Will audio be different?

Disclaimer: I know nothing. All of the above is purely speculative, based on things that to me seem pretty obvious. I’m not divulging secret, privileged information, my brain isn’t under an NDA, and all of that means I could be completely wrong. Take with a box of salt.

Updated: I neglected to link, by way of contrast, this editorial from around the time of the most heated Final Cut followup:
The End Is Night…

In it, Chris Randall (himself a plug-in developer tasked with supporting Logic and AU validation) argues basically the exact opposite of what I do here.

In review, my entire analysis above could be summed up as this: Logic will be on the App Store. It’ll still be more or less the Logic you love, or don’t love, as the case may be, but it’s unlikely to introduce radically new feelings even if you aren’t getting a stack of DVDs.

Let’s be frank. Computers really don’t demand any musicianship; they’re a blank slate with which you can do anything you like, and quantization is always close at hand. But bragging rights aside, whatever anyone else may think of the results, playing musical elements live can often be more satisfying. And it’s refreshing, at a time when software seems to be bending over backwards to offer bleeding-edge technology to compensate for your lack of time and tune, to see people getting more dextrous, not less.

Ukrainian-born, Toronto-based artist Andrew Andriyashev, going under the name Triple A production, sends along a video of his work in a friend’s studio. What’s nice about it is that everything – from instrumental parts to sample slicing – is played live. It’s not a new idea, but it’s nice to see it documented, and I was curious to learn how Andrew got lucky enough to get this studio and skilled enough to make it work.

He explains his tool set to CDM:

[The setting is] my friend’s home based studio in Toronto, called “Studio Dynamic.”

Yes I was using [Apple] Logic for recording. I chopped and changed the pitch of the sample in [open source audio editor] Audacity beforehand and loaded everything in EXS, which I later played along to the beat. It consists of 2 parts, instruments + the chopped up vocal sample.

All the other instruments were recorded live into Logic separately.

About my background: I was born in Ukraine but live in Canada now. I have been making music professionally for about 4 years now. Had placements on MTV in Europe and MuchMusic in Canada. Also I am currently an in-house music producer at one of the biggest recording studios in Canada, “Cherry Beach Sound“.

While my main website is under construction, some of my work can be found here:

www.tripleaproduction.com

Thanks for the nice work, Andrew. So, readers – got any tips and techniques you like to employ in production to keep it live? Or, alternatively, anything more you’d like to know?

Also, our friend Joe Gore details how the whole system works with iPad, including plug-in manipulation and automatic mapping of parameters for plug-in functions. I agree; it’s nicely done.

iPad + Logic + TouchOSC = HOLY CRAP! [sonicgore.com]

Readers do touch upon standardization or interoperability between apps. It’s a good point, and the short answer is, right now, today, OSC doesn’t provide any way to do that. Many of the necessary facilities are there, but there isn’t a way for developers like Apple to support something standardized. It is a real need. It might look nothing like MIDI or later ideas like Mackie Control, both de facto standards (and the latter controlled by just one vendor). But you’d need a way to describe messages that wasn’t recreated by hand each time you use a new app.

Japanese fusion “underground music unit” Human Boot Project have a clever take on the music video, one that – well, let’s face it, probably appeals only to music production nerds like us.

Using the free/open source software Gawker (Mac-only screen capture, not to be confused with thegossip blog), they take an extended timelapse of their production session in Apple Logic, as arrangements and various plug-ins flash by. You get to see the track, “Xen,” assembled before your eyes.

I’ll let you play “spot the plug-in” first, then have a look after the jump for what they used.

Artist Masashi tells CDM the toolkit:

Native Instruments Battery 3
Sugar Bytes EFFECTRIX
RNDigital Inspector XL
Audio Damage DubStation
Smart Electronix LiveCut
Logic Plugin (Amp Designer, Space Designer, EXS24, ES2, etc.)

Human Boot Project have a new album “Don’t Forget the Sheep”.
The album will be available at most major online stores.
here is link of album sample.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/523635/SMAPLE.mp3

Human Boot Project New Album “Don’t Forget the Sheep”
Tracklisting:
1. Super Bathroom (4:17)
2. Yuri (3:36)
3. Dying Forest (4:09)
4. Xan (3:18)
5. Ember (4:03)
6. Sneaking Sheep (3:52)
7. Dawn (3:01)
8. Decoy (3:31)
9. Flatline (3:25)
10. U (2:42)

Human Boot Project
http://www.humanboot.com/
Red Robot Records
http://redrobotrecords.com/

?Human Boot Project?
HumanBootProject are a Japanese underground music unit.This is a genre breaker fusing Jazz with Rock and Drum and Bass and one to get the synapses twinging. (Red Robot Records)

Fun fact: this is what Richard Devine looks like in real time. Honest. Or me, if I get enough coffee.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) represents the end of a long-running transition of the Mac operating system from 32-bit to 64-bit support. 64-bit computing offers marginal (but measurable) performance improvements, and more importantly the ability to address more RAM — a lot more RAM, currently more than is even physically available in any shipping consumer computer. By contrast, under the current Mac OS, each 32-bit application can access up to 4GB of RAM. A few tools, like Apple’s EXS24 and Native Instruments’ Kontakt samplers, can address greater memory through the use of virtual memory and memory server schemes. But you don’t get native, 64-bit memory – yet.

That should begin to change. Today, Apple quietly released Logic 9.1 and MainStage 2.1, providing 64-bit support. They should be the first of more tools. MOTU confirms they’re working on a 64-bit version of Digital Performer and their plug-ins. (The free Ardour should work, too, in theory – it’s already 64-bit on Linux; sounds like one obstacle may be its UI toolkit on Mac.) Core Audio and Core MIDI have been rewritten as 64-bit-native Cocoa frameworks, with full 64-bit support, as of Snow Leopard. But prior to Apple’s announcement today, you wouldn’t have noticed, outside things like the developer examples and AU Kit host.

Logic Pro, MainStage get 64-bit support [The Loop, a recent Mac blog with a strong music focus]

Of course, today isn’t exactly the dawn of a brave new 64-bit age on the Mac – more like another (important) step in that direction. You’ll still want plug-ins to run in 64-bit mode, or you don’t get to reap the advantages. 32-bit plug-ins will work via a 32-bit Audio Unit Bridge, but that’s not the same as native 64-bit support, and such bridges are likely to require some testing and refinement before they’re ready for prime time. (On Windows, Cakewalk’s BitBridge technology for doing the same thing has gone through a fair bit of iteration and may as a result be more mature.)

There are some gotchas for some users, as noted by Jim in his story: REX file support, ReWire, AKAI file import (bizarrely), and the Vienna Symphonic Library Tool don’t yet work in the 64-bit version of Logic. In short, 64-bit will be terrific, but most users will want to wait a bit before they switch over.

Of course, this makes the number one question for Mac developers at NAMM, when do you anticipate 64-bit support? (I’m sure they’ll love that.)

Logic has been a big box of sound toys for some time, but I think what decides whether you really build a working relationship with software like Logic is whether you like editing in it. And that makes Logic Studio 9 worth a new look – and a must-upgrade for fans of the tool. Its combination of subtle tweaks to the editing interface, the ability to edit inside takes, the incredible Flex Time for squishing around audio like Play-Doh, and easy conversion to sampler tracks makes it really fun to edit audio in Logic. You can read the full, detailed review I wrote for Macworld:

Logic Studio: Music workstation suite adds flexible audio, improved editing and live performance, simulated amps and effects [Macworld.com]

The amps and such are fun, but to me the other banner feature in Logic 9 is the vastly improved MainStage, which adds backing tracks, ReWire hosting, and other features that could make it more powerful for live performance. Apparently MainStage has crept into some big-name live shows; I’m going to work on getting more reports from the field. (Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how I can rework my own live set so it requires less software, but that’s me.)

Oh, and one little improvement I didn’t fit in the review: there are some amazing special effect convolution impulses Apple threw in with Space Designer, which should give you more fodder for sound design experimentation.

The record industry may be dying, the planetary economy failing, and music technology elusively complex to most average musicians, yet competition in the DAW space just continues to heat up. I find it amusing that some claim Apple’s aggressive pricing is only possible because they sell hardware. I’d buy that, except for some of Apple’s own competitors. Digidesign will add a pretty powerful version of Pro Tools to a hardware bundle. Cakewalk’s SONAR, once a little more bare-bones in the extras department than Logic, now offers a lot of the same sorts of goodies to Windows users in its own (underrated, I think) DAW. And Reaper is a powerful, cross-platform option that costs just US$60, even for most commercial work (now that they’ve made the individual license more open). In fact, various tools are so good that I think it’s really hard to give people advice. Personal taste is more likely to dictate which you prefer, because the ineffable feeling of using these tools – as similar as they may look on paper – is very different. If I ever work out a good way to describe that in words – which does happen to be my job, whether I’m up to it or not – I’ll let you know.

Any tool you’re using is a tool that matters. And I know we have a number of readers using Logic. Later this week, I’m planning a Logic Q&A to fit some of the technical revelations that didn’t fit in the review, so feel free to ask more questions or comment however you like on the Macworld review.

The market is clear: guitarists (and other instrumentalists) want to plug in a piece of hardware, fire up their Mac, and start playing with GarageBand right away. The announcement of Apple’s new Logic Studio 9 last week coincided with the release of new hardware from Apogee, the audio vendor that has gone Mac-only and Apple-centric. Today during a meeting with Apple, I got my first in-person look at the GiO (pronounced “Geo,” like the compact car, not G.I.O. as would rhyme with G.I. Joe).

A number of impressions that I didn’t get from the press announcement:

The hardware looks great. It’s tough to describe until you see in person, but while it seems to look almost cheap or toy-like in photos, the hardware is quite substantial, solid, and attractive. It’s also nice to see a pedalboard that’s fairly simple, with ample clearance between controls – essential for playing with your feet.

It has awesome colored lights. No, really. Not only do the lights change color, but they’re actually color coded. So you can see, for instance, which stompboxes you’re using based on the color.

It uses MIDI. Let’s get this out of the way. Apogee made such a big deal of saying this was compatible with GarageBand and Logic that I began to wonder if they’d somehow found a way to make something as simple as a pedalboard incompatible with everything else! Not so – the GiO just sends standard MIDI over USB. I’ll have to ask Apogee how this maps, and you may still be Mac-only assuming they wrote their own drivers. But I would imagine at the very least, if you want to swap between Logic and AmpliTube or Logic, you should be okay.

GiO [Apogee Digital]

If you’re in love with Logic and GarageBand, GiO looks quite nice. $399 would be steep for a few buttons for your feet, but in a nice housing with an audio interface, if you get heavy use out of it, you may feel differently. You get integrated control, low-latency audio (instrument in + line out), 5 stompbox buttons + 5 transport controls + next/previous controls, and expression control. Of course, this is not news if you’re happy with similar solutions from IK Multimedia, Line6, Native Instruments, and WAVES – all of which also have impressive software and integrated hardware. And there’s nothing stopping you from using that hardware, or other MIDI pedalboards, even with Logic. And I’ll just keep dreaming of a thin-but-large magical pedalboard that I can toss in a bag with a laptop. My feet need more to do.

Apple has released Logic Studio 9 today. Banner features: “Flex Time” audio warping, new goodies for guitarists (plus integration with a new audio interface and pedalboard from Apogee), expanded support for working with video and outputting compression, and most interestingly, tools for making MainStage a feature you might actually take onstage.

I’m meeting with Apple next week, so if you think of any smart questions, do pass them along. I should receive my testing copy then, too, so expect more details. In the meantime, here’s how it looks “on paper,” in a nutshell.

Live Performance

This to me is the interesting one. I loved the idea of MainStage when it came out, but I had a number of complaints in regards to what musicians would actually want to do for live performance. Specifically:

• MainStage needs a way of playing backing tracks, particularly for bands and acoustic players and soloists.
• ReWire is a must, so people using tools like Ableton Live (or Reason, or the awesome tracker Renoise) can work with them in a MainStage rig.
• Better control mapping was needed for real performance – including grouping.
• Musicians need a way of recording their gigs.

Well, guess what? Apple says they’ve added all of that to MainStage 2. ReWire support should make this particularly interesting, as solutions like a Logic-Live rig now become practical. And this is the first DAW to really try to do backing tracks in a way bands can use, even including Ableton Live.

Grouped controls allow you to drag and drop layouts of controls as macros. It’s a nice implementation, and different from what’s currently out there.

There’s also a live loop recorder, tape style. My first impression of this is that this doesn’t appear to match things like the new looper in Ableton Live 8, which can set an entire project tempo – it’s more like a basic stompbox effect, as we’ve seen previously in Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig. Still, that matches the simplicity of some of the other tools here.

Augh… and yes, that is Apple’s now-ubiquitous album art view as the browser mechanism for templates, proving they really don’t know where to stop. At least it seems they haven’t used that for the entire UI.

Of course, performance is everything in these implementations, so it’ll be fun to torture test MainStage 2 and see how it stands up.

And for anyone who wanted Live clips and Sculpture in one session, this could be interesting.

Flex Time Audio Manipulation

The music software market is already crowded with tools that promise to let you manipulate audio independent of its original tempo – but this implementation is more interesting than you might first think. You actually drag the mouse on the waveform itself, turning the sound into a Silly Putty-like, warpable view. Very much like Ableton Live, Logic also adds modes based on material (rhythmic, polyphonic, slicing), and an audio quantize mode that applies the feel of one track to another.

There’s also a slightly gimmicky record start/stop effect, which I’m sure will be a boon to anyone doing editing for MTV.

But make no mistake about it: Flex Time could heat things up.

Side note: Does Sibelius – now owned by industry titan and major Apple rival Avid – really not care that Apple lifted the name of its “FlexTime” technology, which I thought was trademarked? Did Apple pay off Avid to grab that name? (Especially funny after MainStage had a similarity to Plasq’s OnStage from Rax, a virtually identical feature.)

For Guitarists

• A new pedalboard full of effects
• An “Amp Designer” for combining 25 amps, 25 speaker cabinets, and 3 mics, plus a library of new presets
• Integration with Apogee’s new GiO interface in both Logic and MainStage

Apple is obviously committed to providing a one box solution, so you never have to buy anything for music making that doesn’t have an Apple logo on it – something I’m sure doesn’t make Native Instruments, Waves, IK Multimedia, and other competitors exactly thrilled. Those solutions are already really good, but I have heard Apple’s implementation is quite nice, and I’ve heard it from people who are actual guitarists.

Notation Enhancements

Ornaments have been expanded with a broader notation library, and a set of some 4000 chord grids beef up tab capabilities for guitars.

I still think you’d be nuts to use Logic in place of something like Sibelius for major notation editing, just because I find the dedicated tool much quicker to use. On the other hand, Logic was born as “Notator,” so it has notation in its blood.

Other Improvements

• Turn tracks into sampler tracks (again, the first time I’ve seen a good implementation like this outside Ableton Live)
• Drum replacement
• Improved editing inside take folders – so you can adjust recordings while keeping your takes
• Better bouncing, track import
• More bizarre warp effects for Space Designer (okay, I have to admit, I’ve gotten addicted to using convolution reverbs for special effects, so curious what they put in there)
• A Vocal Jam Pack

There’s also a new browser for instruments, it appears, apparently to make this more accessible to new users. On the other hand, that’s a bit like holding a toddler’s hand before putting him in the seat of your Ferrari, when it comes to interfaces like Ultrabeat. (See what I mean on Apple’s site.) But I suppose it can’t hurt – and meanwhile, the market for educational products remains.

Soundtrack Pro 3

Soundtrack Pro is the oft-overlooked audio editor bundled with Logic. Part of the promise of Soundtrack is working well with Final Cut, so it’s nice to see some new features that help distinguish this tool. (I have to say, on the Mac I do prefer working in Soundtrack to working in Peak — call me crazy.)

• Vocal Level Match applies a vocal level from one clip to another clip – fantastic for podcasting and production for video, if it works as advertised
• Editing by frequency (’bout time — I’m hoping this means we can work directly in the frequency view, as you should be able to do)
• Advanced Time Stretch
• Compressor output workflows

Breakfast of Champions

Apple has also added greater emphasis to artists, mirroring what they’re doing with GarageBand — though any hopes for Pro Artist Lessons with Logic are sadly thwarted so far. What they are doing is “Pro Sessions,” in which you can download actual session files. (I’m guessing that doesn’t include some third-party plug-ins they used, and it’s no match for, say, remix stems, but…)

Logic Studio in Action

(Yep, people use Logic)

Artist Sessions (one nice gem in there — a Santigold remix… but was Santigold herself not a user of Logic?)

What’s Not in this Upgrade

As near as I can tell, Logic will not support 64-bit memory addressing or 64-bit mixing. The former is extremely unfortunate for users of big sample libraries, although third-party tools do fill some of that gap. (Even so, native 64-bit memory support would be welcome.) It’s possible we may see this in an update, however; if it’s “in the future,” we just won’t know because Apple makes a policy of commenting only once things are released.

Also, it appears that Logic’s increasingly long-in-the-tooth library of effects and synths — once part of the core appeal of the tool — are left as-is in this release, which would be unfortunate. On the other hand, with options like Native Instruments’ Komplete to fill that need, and a price of US$499, it’ll be hard to fault Apple on this.

Many folks expected some sort of iPhone / iPod touch app, given that third parties have built them for control and the like. They were wrong, but I’m not surprised — Apple likes to keep its consumer and pro features fairly separate.

Any other omissions you notice, or things you’d like me to ask about? Let me know.

At least I have a fairly decent working list for what I’m likely to be hard at work testing when this arrives in the mail.

And Logic has some intense competition, too, with even a new entry on the scene this year (Propellerhead’s Record).

Let the games begin…

Apple Logic Studio

All images Courtesy of Apple.

Following GarageBand has long been a good way to follow what improvements might be in store for Apple’s flagship Logic. And many Logic users use GarageBand as a sketchpad for bigger sets – Apple, of course, hope that GarageBand is a gateway drug to their delicious higher-end studio. GarageBand ’09 is no exception.

New Models

Lessons may be the feature about which you’ve been hearing the most in GarageBand ’09, but the major improvement in the software itself is the new guitar amp and effect modeling. I’ve confirmed with Apple that this is a new engine from the ground up, not what you’ve been hearing in previous versions or even in Logic Studio 8. It’s clear a lot of work went into the modeling; the models sound absolutely terrific, and I’ve heard from at least one very talented guitarist that the results will stand up to high standards. Whether that makes Apple’s models a Guitar Rig or AmpliTube “killer” remains to be seen – my sense is that, at some point, that’s about taste in models and features, as all of these models are getting pretty darned good. But given that the guitar models in Logic in the past have been slightly lacking, this is one to watch.

Amp models: Marshall, Mesa Boogie, Vox, Fender Combo and Tweed
Effects: Sustain, Delay, Phaser, Overdrive, Fuzz, Chorus, Flanger, Vibrato, Filter

If you want to open GarageBand ’09 projects in Logic, you can. Logic will read the whole project, and the only feature that won’t work is the guitar amp models and effects. Your project will open, but any tracks using those effects will have the effects disabled. (Again, I’ve confirmed this with Apple.) That presumably means that you’ll want to export those tracks to audio, then import, if you really need to go in this direction.

Of course, this is really unfortunate, because as Macworld’s review notes, you can’t actually control these effects with anything other than the mouse. Apple hopes you’ll upgrade to Logic, but for now, you won’t get these models there, either. That means the IK’s, WAVES, and NI’s of the world are very much safe for the time being.

GB09 and Logic

Will Logic get these amp models? Well, of course it will. Apple won’t comment on future releases, but even Apple has said that their upgrade policy is to introduce improvements to Logic and GarageBand/iLife on an ongoing basis, then migrate those improvements. So, the question is, will we get a Logic “8.1″ with new guitar effects, or do we have to wait for “Logic 9″? I’m guessing we’ll get a point-one release for $29.99 or something, but, um, that’s an easy prediction — I’ve got roughly 50/50 odds.

What’s somewhat disappointing is that Apple seems not to have just implemented these as Audio Units, which would have meant you could drop them in Ableton Live or Rax or Kore or whatever you want – which could have convinced more musos to upgrade to iLife ’09.

GarageBand Hacks? By the way, I think there may be a way to hack control of GarageBand’s effects. They support automation. And GarageBand has in the past responded to Mackie Control, I believe — correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that how M-Audio’s iControl GarageBand controller worked? (That controller appears to be defunct. Anyone still got one?) It’d be fun, just for the heck of it, to find some way to control these effects with hardware.

My guess is, whatever Apple has decided about “beginning” users, the guitarist just discovering software is even more likely to wonder why he/she can’t stomp something to enable or disable effects. Or you could just leave that fuzz on … all the time.