
Logic Pro X - SanderMak
http://www.apple.com/logic-pro/whats-new/
======
mambodog
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.

~~~
scrumper
Your comment is a bit like free jazz: it's all very impressive on the surface,
but it doesn't really _mean_ anything and ultimately one feels like it was
just an exercise in ego massage.

Logic has long had a home in the 'pro' world at the songwriting and demo
production stage. You'll be hard-pressed to find an engineer in a commercial
studio doing tracking or mixing in anything other than Pro Tools (though they
certainly exist), but Logic has a healthy following with artists themselves.
When viewed through that lens, the changes made in this version are a pretty
natural progression for the software: for the most part, they're aimed at the
writing and tracking process.

With that in mind, the 'Drummer' feature is less 'Garageband-y' than it might
look: it's a considerably more flexible alternative to the giant pool of pre-
recorded beats (Apple Loops) that Logic has had for a long time. Such a tool
is pretty useful to the songwriter putting a demo together, to the music-for-
picture composer, to the ever-growing army of artists who ship off near-
completed songs to musician-for-hire studios on the web. I'm sure I'm not the
only one who's heard those loops in commercial recordings (often in TV music,
which is composed under deadlines to tighter budgets). I'm looking forward to
being able to have my temporary backing rhythm follow the sections of a song:
far better than trying to find a matching loop or building a beat from scratch
when all you want is to lay down a guitar part and focus on developing your
idea.

Your argument about the bypass button is just silly. If you have a bunch of
plugins open on screen at once, it's obviously better to be able to see, at a
glance, which ones are on or off. The old way made that harder. Clearly you
have never sat for half an hour tweaking a compressor, certain of the
improvement it was making, only to realize the damn thing was in bypass the
entire time.

I can see more Pro-oriented things in there than you: a redesigned channel
strip that reorients itself according to signal flow. Meters that work. A
scriptable MIDI processor. Flex pitch, or whatever they called it. I also see
a crisper UI and a clever way to facilitate interaction with complex
instruments and plugins (the Smart Control macro thingies).

Of course, I'm just an amateur, so I suppose my opinion doesn't count. I
suspect that you are too, but perhaps I'm just more comfortable with it.

\-----

EDIT: I guess my long-winded point is this: why does it matter whether you
think the program is becoming 'easier to use' (the horror); all that should
matter is whether the new features are meaningful to you, and whether it
breaks anything you need at present.

I work in enterprise software by day, and our UX team is constantly looking to
consumer software and devices for usability ideas. There is absolutely nothing
inherently bad about making something difficult become easy to use. It cuts
down on errors, makes people happier, decreases stress, and makes them more
productive. All of these things are just as valuable in the studio as they are
in the accounts receivable office. There is nothing 'pro' about making life
difficult for yourself.

~~~
mambodog
As one of the other replies to your comment touched on, I am of the belief
that it is very difficult to optimise a complex interface for all skill levels
(while maintaining the same level of productivity for users at the high end).

You seem to be taking the term 'amateur' as dismissive or even insulting. I
absolutely do not mean any offence by it, simply that it represents a shifting
of focus of the application to a different group of users with a different set
of needs. However, I see this group as already being served by something such
as Garageband (perhaps with just a few additions of functionality).

I lament a truly great tool for high end users becoming watered down and less
efficient for its established base, who know what they're doing and just need
the interface to get out of the way as much as possible.

Regardless, I was attempting to express my genuine sadness and disappointment
in one of my favourite tools becoming a bit less useful to users such as
myself, I certainly didn't intend it to come across as an 'ego massage'.

~~~
scrumper
I would encourage you to spend a bit of time with the new user manual for LPX.
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what they've done: there's really
nothing missing, concealed, or watered down; even the environment is still
there. There are just some new ways to access that power.

Arguing about this stuff is all fun, but ultimately we're all musicians (among
other things). Snarkiness doesn't help anyone, so I apologize if I caused any
offense to you personally. I do stand by what I said about your _comment_
though.

------
wavesounds
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?

~~~
Griever
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
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.

~~~
IanChiles
And then if you had an idea on how to improve the music, it would just be a
nice fork-edit-pull request away from improving the album. Truly collaborative
music could be really cool.

~~~
coldtea
> _And then if you had an idea on how to improve the music, it would just be a
> nice fork-edit-pull request away from improving the album. Truly
> collaborative music could be really cool._

Only artists don't usually like it when somebody else "improves" their music
-- that's a recipy for havoc. They have what is called a "vision" for their
piece, so that any improvement would have to play within that vision.

Not to mention that what's an "improvement" to one, is an abomination for
another.

------
NamTaf
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.

~~~
Sym3tri
If you want flat use Ableton Live. They've been flat since before flat was
cool, and it's a much better DAW IMO.

~~~
MichaelGG
Ableton's not just about flat/cool/design. It's about providing proper UI
controls. Why waste half your screen with gigantic knobs that make input a
pain? Instead, a label and a value is all you need. Why have a long selector
switch if a dropdown suffices? If you want hardware, then buy a hardware
controller with little displays so you can get all hands-on.

When setting up really complex sounds and devices, I can't imagine any other
approach. How do you represent a device that contains, say, 10 sub-devices?
Ableton makes it super clear to setup and inspect.

Unfortunately, it seems like few other companies agree with this approach and
spend lots of effort drawing backgrounds and rendering knobs and switches.

I think it's a hold over from the days when to experiment with sounds, you
actually did have to go plugging various cables in and playing with knobs.

------
bsaul
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.

~~~
calinet6
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
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.

~~~
dorkrawk
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.

~~~
owlmusic
Reaper also has the excellent discounted license for $60 which covers a lot of
musicians who would otherwise be forced by the singular license of Reason /
Logic Pro / Ableton Live.

------
stephth
Exciting addition, almost missed it:

 _Scripter_

 _Extensible plug-in that can process or generate MIDI data using standard
JavaScript._

~~~
jianshen
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
I don't even know what an Arpeggiator is, sounds cool though.

~~~
widdershins
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
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
Patterns, random, fast, short, whatever. Most packaged arpeggiators have all
sorts of knobs to twist.

------
zefhous
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.

------
ssharp
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
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
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.

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

~~~
retrogradeorbit
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.

~~~
marknutter
Could you elaborate a bit on what you can do with scripting in Reaper? That
sounds very interesting.

~~~
retrogradeorbit
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.

------
icarus_drowning
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
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
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...

------
mhax
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?

~~~
chasing
Probably as a hedge against people who already own Logic 9 getting annoyed
that there's no upgrade price...

~~~
eropple
I'm sort of pissed, as I bought Logic (a personal copy, used to use ones at
school when I attended) about six months ago. Spending another $200 now,
despite really liking the new features, sucks--I'm an amateur, that double-dip
hurts my hobby funds.

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

------
cpenner461
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?

~~~
OMBUG
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.

~~~
cocoflunchy
I was about to say that, Reaper is great, it's only $60 and the guys that make
it seem great too ;)

------
securingsincity
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.

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

~~~
Zoepfli
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
Nope. Everybody has to pay $200.

~~~
Zoepfli
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
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.

~~~
Zoepfli
Absolutely, as I said, "new app" (= new item).

AppShopper also automatically started tracking them as 2 items:

\- [http://appshopper.com/mac/music/logic-
pro](http://appshopper.com/mac/music/logic-pro)

\- [http://appshopper.com/mac/music/logic-
pro-x](http://appshopper.com/mac/music/logic-pro-x)

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

------
caplingerc
"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
Yeah. Considering how much Apple prides itself on good UI design, I have no
clue how ES2 happened.

~~~
splicer
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
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
I was referring to the fact that ES2 was designed before Apple acquired
Emagic.

------
Roboprog
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")

~~~
icarus_drowning
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.

------
brunorsini
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)

------
lewispollard
'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
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
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.

------
kunai
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)

~~~
calinet6
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
> 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.

~~~
calinet6
Yeah, I'm sure there actually _are_ lots of UI problems, and you could
generally design a UI that is better for controlling the effects and levels
than the physical analogy used here.

But it's hard to beat a UI that not only feels accessible, but is accessible
if you've used the (often famous) hardware in real life, and not only that,
teaches you how to use it so that if you ever encounter that specific pedal or
this effects unit in reality, you have some clue of how it works. Maybe it's
not a concern and I'm making this shit up, but it is at least a cool
advantage.

------
joeblau
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.

------
andyfleming
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.

------
enen
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.

------
MrGando
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.

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

------
dmmalam
Is this fully cocoafied like FCPX?

------
crucialfelix
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
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-
no...](http://www.macworld.com/article/2044283/logic-pro-x-loses-none-of-its-
power-gains-great-new-features.html)

[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-t...](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)

~~~
crucialfelix
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.

------
jasonlingx
Finally! :)

