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.

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.

Delay Designer: This effect now allows custom delay taps, with optional sync to project tempo.

Combine clips into multichannel clip: This is nice: drag up to 24 source clips to the timeline, and you automatically get a combined multichannel clip, which should be handy for surround and stereo multichannel alike.

Various fixes for performance / stability / etc.

But there’s one release note that caught my eye: Soundtrack Pro 2 does not support iTunes Plus files. Now, that’s curious, given iTunes Plus files are supposedly “DRM-free” and stored in a format Soundtrack Pro 2 does support (AAC). In fact, I’d kind of call this, well, DRM. I can even think of cases where you might want to trim a track you bought from iTunes, like removing an intro. Not a big deal by any means, mind you, but — odd.

Hmmm…

Soundtrack Pro 2 supports AAC files.

QuickTime can open iTMS Plus files. (If you do want to edit the file, by the way, you can slice out an intro of that iTMS Plus file right in QuickTime Player, making this all the odder.)

Soundtrack Pro 2 can’t. The only reason seems to be that Apple disabled the ability to do that. That sure sounds like Digital Rights Management to me (albeit in a very specific and bizarre case).

If anyone knows a reason why I might be wrong here, please do speak up. (Just tried it for myself with an ITMS Plus track, and Soundtrack Pro in fact reported that it couldn’t open the file.)

Updated: Or it could just be a bug. “DRM” as a theory still doesn’t make sense. The author of Sound Studio notes an AAC bug that’s a likely culprit. It’d be ironic that Apple’s own developers couldn’t work around an Apple API problem — but I can’t actually pretend to be surprised, either, especially as this particular functionality wouldn’t be a very high priority for support in Soundtrack Pro. Thanks, Lucius. (See comments.) And, yeah, that makes a heck of a lot more sense than selective DRM that takes effect only in a single pro app and nowhere else on the system. We’ll call it DPB: Digital Playback Bug.

I should also note that Felt Tip Software’s Sound Studio is an excellent, eminently affordable wave editor for Mac. I used it in the early days of OS X when nothing else ran. Since then, it’s become a very mature piece of software — well worth the cash over, say, suffering through Audacity for free. (Sorry, Audacity.) So if you feel left out by the fact that Soundtrack Pro is only available within Final Cut Studio, you should add Sound Studio to your list of tools to consider as an alternative, as well.

Soundtrack Pro 2 from Apple offers some major new improvements over the first release of the “Pro” audio editor from Apple. Multichannel editing now works properly, with the ability to nudge by frames and move clip envelopes together with clips, and there are some brilliant new features for conforming audio projects to video and a “Lift and Stamp” tool for applying audio attributes from one clip (including matching EQ and copying effects) to another.

Macworld.com has just published my complete review of the software:

Pros: Vastly improved multichannel editing and file import and export; Conform feature makes Final Cut integration more elegant; efficient surround panning; improved recording; convenient Lift and Stamp audio.

Cons: Automation requires AppleScript; rigid and sometimes sluggish interface; available only as part of the Final Cut Studio suite.

Soundtrack Pro 2: Improved editing and new features help you sync audio with video

Soundtrack vs. Final Cut Studio vs. Logic

The bad news, of course, is that the only way to get Soundtrack Pro 2 is to either buy Final Cut Studio or upgrade to the whole Final Cut Studio. Worse, as we’ve commented here before, existing Soundtrack Pro users had to upgrade to Final Cut Studio just to get Intel compatibility. Not surprisingly, this issues comes up in comments even at Macworld.com (and I’ve certainly heard it repeatedly from readers here).

Apple’s made their decision, though, and on some level I definitely understand it. The reality is that this market isn’t terribly big. Apple indicated when they made the decision to discontinue Soundtrack Pro as a standalone product that response had been lackluster. And I’ve heard from waveform software developers that it really isn’t a big market. Lots of people do need to edit audio at some point, but they’re often intimidated by the tools out there, or just don’t make the leap of investing in a dedicated tool. I do think it’s too bad Intel users didn’t have a better upgrade path, of course.

Mac users are hardly high-and-dry when it comes to audio editing. There are other standalone wave editors from which to choose, like the old standby Peak and newer entries like the Audiofile Wave Editor and Adobe’s Soundbooth CS3, which has just started to ship.

Before anyone worries any more about this issues, though, I think the real question is when some of these features will show up in Logic. I have no idea what Apple will do with their next version of Logic, but it’s a pretty safe guess to figure some of Soundtrack Pro’s features will show up in Logic. (I don’t think there will be a bundled copy of Soundtrack in Logic, but if they copy some of the functionality, you might not want it.)

For those of you who do use Final Cut Studio, of course, and cross between the visual and sound worlds (as we do), Soundtrack Pro is well worth a look. The integration and value is greatly expanded in this version for people who do want Soundtrack as a part of Final Cut Studio. Be sure to check out the Final Cut Pro and Color reviews by my Macworld colleagues, or my Motion review. Complaints welcome here.

What About Audio Post?

I’m curious to hear what some of our post production readers think of the new audio post features. To me, it’s a little soon to tell how things like the new conform feature will work in actual production environments, especially since we’ve debated here on CDM over features the size of King Kong (in movieland) or Doctor Who (in TVland). Those of you working in post, do share … though, naturally, the integration here assumes you’re starting out with workflows in Final Cut Pro to begin with, and are willing to do audio conform outside Pro Tools.