Logic Pro 9 LOGIC 9 IS OUT!!

These L9 guitar amps and stomp boxes lock you into Logic or Mainstage on a Mac. I'd rather do this with the hardware boxes or 3rd party software and have the freedom to stomp away with or without logic. Plus its much more fun to do this outside the DAW.
 
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These L9 guitar amps and stomp boxes lock you into Logic or Mainstage on a Mac. I'd rather do this with the hardware boxes or 3rd party software and have the freedom to stomp away with or without logic.

This sounds as if you won't upgrade your DAW because it has now more great effects on board. Or don't you use Logic at all? This would explain the statement.


However, in the meantime I know the new pedals and amps and they are really great. Not comparable to the noisy GuitarAmp Pro which was great at his time. I can imagine that the new amps will make a lot of reamping obsolete. And I already love two of the pedals very much. Don't know if they are simulations of existing boxes, they just sound awesome for my needs.

What I like most is that we didn't get only a handful of amps with clean and crunch sounds and a ton of distortion. They are well balanced, many of the classic amps are here. Maybe the lovers of clean sound got a little favored but this is ok, they have more problems with the textures than those who need sheer power (I think so, but I am rather on the clean side and may be wrong about high gain textures).

The amps are not exact replicas, at least not when it comes to their controls. The controls are the same on all models and share their settings. This is a huge advantage because you can easily flip through similar amps and get the best one quickly. Then you adjust some controls for this model and you are set. I had the chance to compare the virtual with a real Fender amp and I can tell you, if there were not the different room acoustics, I would say they sound the same.

Regarding third party amp and pedal simulations - I agree, they are more flexible if you use more than one DAW. But how many really good virtual effects are available? Listen to the Logic effects and tell me if there are more convincing amp sounds from other manufacturers. I mean the plug-and-play style, not the kind where you can virtully bend one leg of a particular transistor. If you find some that are equal or slightly better, they will probably cost as much as the whole Logic and Mainstage. And perform less effective because they are not native.

For hardware, well, we all know how much fun it is to play with the real thing. But to be honest, the real thing does not always sound good. The devices hum, they are noisy, they break, sometimes they don't work well together and they are expensive. For a perfect clean signal path you need a lot of experience and really good gear.

I realize that I sound like a new prayer of the Logic Sect. I'm not. I am not even married to Logic, probably engaged. And I still use hardware in front of the computer. It's just that a good sounding amp in software, with the right personality but 100% recallable and switchable, has its advantages.
 
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Hi Peter. Thanks for your opinions on the guitar effects. I guess my post was trying to say that these new effects aren't a selling point for me. I am building a collection of stomp boxes for guitar and keyboards, mostly the Line6 ones when I could in fact get the all software versions of them. But I prefer the hardware boxes.

It seems short sighted to rely on plugins which are only available in Garage Band or Logic Studio. While I solely use Logic at the moment, that may not be true in the future. You would surely want your plugins to be transportable to whatever your current DAW is. So I would be inclined to avoid plugins which the developer designs to be Logic only.

I am sure I will upgrade to L9 sooner or later, alongside Snow Leopard and probably a clean install on the Mac as well. So I like a lot of lurkers really appreciate everyone's experiences.
 
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It seems short sighted to rely on plugins which are only available in Garage Band or Logic Studio. While I solely use Logic at the moment, that may not be true in the future. You would surely want your plugins to be transportable to whatever your current DAW is. So I would be inclined to avoid plugins which the developer designs to be Logic only.

I expect that the large palette of effects that are included with Logic are amongst the main reasons why many of us use the program. Bearing in mind that many of them have been around for a long time, the one thing that I would say is that it is anything but short sighted to use them. Some of them have been around since Logic 4, and if you have upgraded logic since then, you can still access arrangements you used those effects in back then. In the world of 3rd party plugins, there have been enough cases of having to wait for companys to move from VST to AU, port their AUs to UB, having to deal with discontinued plugins (Nigel for the UAD being a case in point) as well as losing settings moving from earlier versions of logic.

I also tend not to think of them as plugins, rather integral parts of Logic.

YMMV of course
 
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I'm too much of a swinger Markdvc, to stick with one software for life :) I can see myself installing Cubase, get a good guitar idea in my head and then realise that Logic has got the sounds I want in it. This is deliberately done to keep you loyal, they all do it. But I don't know which software I will want to use for a project. I don't see why I should have to stay with any one product. So I tend to shy away from the unique plugins which tie you down to a product.
 
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There has been a reported bug that Replace is not working with Punch On The Fly enabled as expected. Apple has confirmed this and promised they will fix it.

Performing this on a single region will automatically create a Take Folder,
different to the behavior in Logic 8 and different to the description within the manual.
 
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Flex editing of regions within take folders! - A killer feature for me. I look forward to using flex elsewhere too. It will be interesting to see how it preserves transients. A shame, as others have said that this melodyne-style editing hasn't extended to pitch as well, but I guess we have to have something to look forward too. :)

Roger Jackson
Film Music
Oxford UK
 
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I'm too much of a swinger Markdvc, to stick with one software for life :)

I had that attitude for a while. I had songs in Studio Vision, Cubase, Digital Performer, Logic, and Pro Tools formats! But the thing is, eventually you want to actually get some work done, and not futz around with formats and remembering which work flow went with which app, etc. Personally, I settled on Logic. It didn't have the best of absolutely every feature/workflow, but it had so many good features, and it's workflow was comfortable enough, that I could be more productive in it.

So my Ember After album, for example, at one point had songs in Cubase, Digital Performer, and Logic formats. By the end of the project, it was all Logic.

Okay, getting back to guitar stuff: do you use hardware amps? I've written a fair amount of articles on tube amps, and I'm basically a "t00b snob" at heart. :thmbup: But perhaps because of that, I'm used to "committing" to a sound. When I record my amp, I don't take a clean DI feed so that I can affect it later. The sound out of the speaker is the sound I want.

So think of Amp Designer as your guitar amp. When you like a sound, bounce it. That way, if you choose to use another program later, you'll still have your sound. That's how it was done in the days of only hardware amps, that's how many of us still do it now. Of course, you still get the benefit of experimenting with a lot of different amp simulations before you commit to the specific amp simulation you bounce, and you can save the final amp bounce in place until the very end, so you can even adjust your amp to the mix.

But ultimately, to me the "guitar track" is not simply the raw signal coming from the pickups, but a combination of the guitar, amp, and pedals used in crafting the guitar performance. And if those come from a proprietary plug-in or a general one doesn't matter, since it will all be bounced to the track, so I can then use that track in any other program without regard to its "proprietary-ness."

Orren
 
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I've written a fair amount of articles on tube amps, and I'm basically a "t00b snob" at heart. :thmbup:
Orren

Hey Orren,

I'm kind of curious to get your take on the new Amp Designer and Pedal Board plugins - given your expertise in the area. How do you like them compared to some of the other "flagship" guitar processing software tools around? And how about compared to hardware?
 
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All I can say so far about the Amp Designer models:
They absolutely rock.

Maybe I won't need Guitar Rig after all.

mk3
 
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But the thing is, eventually you want to actually get some work done

Ouch. I resemble that remark :eeek:

Everything you say is quite right. I loved Logic 4 (the more esoteric and unguessable the function, the more I liked it) even though I had DP and Cubase as well. I only left Logic because it was time to upgrade my Mac and Windows XP was actually quite good. So I changed camps to PC and saw Logic no more until this year with Logic Pro 8. So how come the fonts are all uniform in the windows now? What's up with that ? :D

For anything that you are doing, there's always some other piece of software that could do it better. But when you drag the project over you realise the 1,000 other things that you don't like about it for that particular task. Been there, no wait, STILL there.

I am now totally convinced that unless you have printed a track, or bounced it to audio, it is just a temporary scratch pad. I am in a completely different mindset with audio than a midi track. So I completely agree with you about recording guitar to audio and removing the plugins. Its nice to be able to change the amp and effects afterwards. But you could also just re-record it again, musicians don't just play something once.

Still, there's that nagging problem of proprietary plugins. What if Cubase had an automatic Cher voice plugin that everyone needed, and DP added an instant hit generator? You can't change platforms because of them. I was saying that in my first post really when I said I'm not considering the guitar effects as a reason to upgrade. I may not be using Logic in 10 years time, not from being too wishy washy to commit to a DAW but things change over time and I may be unable to use Logic in ways I can't foresee. It already happened once to me.

I can live with a "love the one you're with" philosophy however. If I have the plugin, use it. But if using it requires reengineering your brain to learn new software then forget it!

Cheers,
B
 
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Hey Orren,

I'm kind of curious to get your take on the new Amp Designer and Pedal Board plugins - given your expertise in the area. How do you like them compared to some of the other "flagship" guitar processing software tools around? And how about compared to hardware?

Aw, thanks for the vote of confidence! I'm actually thinking of writing a complete review to be posted in the review section of logic-users-group.com, so I'll save the details for that. But here's my summary:

One thing I've found is that none of these software packages get all the models to sound good. It's always a bit confusing that you'll get a program that nails one kind of amp but gets another totally wrong. You always wonder "what happened with that one?" But there are no exceptions to this rule. So the question becomes, which packages have more that are on than aren't, and which ones nail the amps/pedals you're looking for.

When judging amp simulations, I am looking for two things:
  1. Does the model "feel" like an amp?
  2. Does the model sound like an amp?

For those who aren't guitarists, by "feel" I mean does it respond the way tubes do, which alternately compress or "breathe" based on how hard you play, and how the volume knob on your guitar is used. For example, when you play a string lightly, it will compress differently than if you slam your pick down hard on the string. And if you turn your guitar volume knob down, it will act as much as a "gain" knob, reducing distortion as much as volume.

When I say "sound like an amp" I never mean "sound like the specific amp I have in my studio." Especially with vintage amps, they all sound different. Even with modern amps, different runs may have components of non-identical tolerances, have used different manufacturer's tubes due to availability, etc. So you can have two Marshall JCM800s from different years that sound different, etc. But they both have the same "sonic footprint" even if at identical settings you can tell them apart. So that's the sort of "tonal ball park" I'm looking for.

In general, I would say that most of the simulations in Amp Designer, from the clean amps to mid-gain amps really capture the feel of the amps modeled. You can roll off your volume knob, play with picking dynamics, and the models will respond like a tube amp will. This is the most important feature for actually "performing" with the amps. To a guitarist using Amp Designer as his rig, this may very well trump all else. If you're reamping, this may or may not be important to you.

Some of the high gain amps are very responsive as well. I find the Brown amp and High Octane especially are excellent "players." For whatever reason, I don't think any of these simulations can get the feel of the Boogie right, and the "American Modern Stack" or whatever it's precise name is the weakest simulation. It feels totally overcompressed and un-amp-like no matter what you do. That doesn't mean you'll never get it to sound good, but if you've ever plugged into a real mesa boogie amp, you'll know that the software model isn't even an approximation.

As for sound, I think all of them are in the tonal ballpark of the amps they model. Some of them sound really good, and others not so good. I like the Fende and Vox simulations, and some of the boutique simulations, quite a bit. Some of the High Gain simulations are real winners-they sound open, which real amps do, while some simulations sound really dark and filtered. I think the lower-gain Marshalls sound really good, but the high gain ones don't have the richness of the real Marshalls. And as I mentioned, the Boogie is just...sigh...

Don't forget to mix and match cabinets with amps as well. I think the UI of moving the mics around in Amp Designer is genius-I'm sure that the other simulations will be copying it in the future. The Ribbon mic really sounds great, I love it! I sometimes find that switching out the cabinet and mic lead to a tone I prefer than the original cabinet matched to an amp. And also, I like to use IRs of my own speakers as well (more on that below).

I think Pedalboard is really excellent as well. Not all the distortion plug-ins are great-I think when pushed, the high gain pedals tend to sound quite digital. But used on non-guitar sources (vocals, drums, bass) or used in moderation, such as to add some "hair" to an already distorted amp, they sound fantastic.

The Tru Delay, the Vibe pedal, Heavenly Chorus, the Ring Mod, and Auto Wah all sound really fantastic. Some of the others do as well. But also, just ergonomically as plug-ins they are designed really well, with intuitive browser features, great routing options, easy UI, etc.

I think that Amp Designer and Pedalboard compare extremely well to all the packages out there. I think that Line 6, TH1, IK Multimedia and Native Instruments may have a simulation here or there that is better than Amp Designer or Pedalboard, but overall I think Amp Designer and Pedalboard are more consistent in quality.

The main advantage some of the others, such as Guitar Rig, have over Logic's offerings are the amazing flexibility. You of course have that level of flexibility with Logic as a whole, but not "in the plug-in" so to speak. For example, with ReValver (Peavey) or TH1 (Overloud), you can load IRs of your own speaker cabinets. You can't do that with Amp Designer, however you can turn off the speaker simulation then add your own speaker IR in Space Designer. (for information on how to record your own speaker in Impulse Response Utility, see the IRU manual.)

All in all, I'd say that Logic's guitar offerings just went from mediocre compared to the evolution of the other third party offerings, to world class. In fact, I've used Amp Designer and Pedalboard in addition to my real hardware amps and pedals in the latest track I'm working on-it definitely produces "release quality" tones, not just for scratch tracks.

Orren
 
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well they sound mighty fine I think but they're not going to make me wanta stop using my Boss GS-10 for guitar recording, however.

thanks for your thoughts

rz
 
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well they sound mighty fine I think but they're not going to make me wanta stop using my Boss GS-10 for guitar recording, however.
Why should they? You wouldn't buy another hardware device right now just because it is available. The GS-10 meets your requirements. If you want you can use only one or none of Logics amps and you can try the virtual cabinets alone with the GS-10. The new possibilities do not force you to change your sound, they just give you more options.
 
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Orren Merton said:
Aw, thanks for the vote of confidence! I'm actually thinking of writing a complete review to be posted in the review section of logic-users-group.com, so I'll save the details for that. But here's my summary:
...
Orren

Hey Orren,

Thanks for posting that! That's exactly what I was hoping for :)
 
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I have actually downloaded all the PDF files for the complete Logic Pro 9 Manual from the Apple Logic 9 References web site page. I then assigned them to their proper folders so that people know where to look for specific user files. IOW, it's the complete Logic 9 manual. I am currently trying to make arrangements for these to be shared. If Logic Users Group would like these files (120MB) to make available to subscribers, let me know.

Jonathan
 
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I have actually downloaded all the PDF files for the complete Logic Pro 9 Manual from the Apple Logic 9 References web site page. I then assigned them to their proper folders so that people know where to look for specific user files. IOW, it's the complete Logic 9 manual. I am currently trying to make arrangements for these to be shared. If Logic Users Group would like these files (120MB) to make available to subscribers, let me know.

Jonathan

Jonathan, could you please first of all clarify with Apple if you are allowed to do that. There are in all likelihood copyright issues involved in distributing this material.

kind regards

Mark
 
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Why?

They're free. They're PDFs of the operation of Logic 9. Apple posts them for free on their website for anyone in the world that wants to download them. Apple should have made the same package that I have made.

There is nothing for Apple to lose and there is everything for Apple to gain. There is no copyright infringement when the original purpose was to distribute this propaganda openly to the public.

I'm not altering anything from what they have already posted. I simply packaged it for easier distribution, so that Logic Users could have a manual.

You've lost me here.......

Jonathan
 
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I think the best thing to do would be to ask Apple if you can distribute them. The Apple site says:

* Copyright © 2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Which means that they have the copyright. It is irrelevant whether something is free, they own the copyright and if anybody else copies it and distributes it, then it could be a breach of that copyright. All Mark is implying I think is that you can do that, but it would be your risk legally - one that we at this site are not able to sanction or be involved with. If we allow distribution through this site, then we would potentially be liable.

EDIT: I agree with you, Apple should have done that! Hopefully they will very soon.
 
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