Logic Pro 9 Logic Pro 9 first impressions

G

georgelegeriii

Logician
Hi Luggers.

Got the upgrade last night, and have spent about 5 hours today working with Logic Pro 9. Here are my first thoughts/observations:

No PDF manual. The Zoom key commands have changed yet again, 3d time now. Still crazy about the behavior thing with regions not selecting the track or editor when selected. The window focus is still a bad thing for me, BUT they have placed a white line around the focused editor, a better way to have it that I'd prefer, but workable now.

The bounce in place is very cool, but found that it didn't properly bounce every time, so I'll have to be careful to check every bounce before I change anything on the source track.

Flex time is pretty neat. I used it for getting my sloppy guitar tracks tighter, and I was playing with the demo session, changing the vocals phrasing. Some people are really going to love this one.

Looks the same more or less, has the same "vibe" as 8 does.

I used it while working on 2 songs I have been working on this last week, and was able to use it no problems.

I know there are a few additional things (new patch libraries for the plug-ins, the compressor patches being very cool) that I haven't come across, but without the manual, I am going to have to "come across them" while working, and read the html manual. I did try and use the HTML manual after copying it from the app contents, but it seems to be copy protected some way, and won't view, so I wasn't able to turn it into a pdf for reading outside of Logic.

There are no hard manuals, other than an installed manual, a Logic Pro beginner manual (which is pretty good for Logic newbies) and a Mainstage 2 manual, which I haven't gone through yet.

So far, I'd give it a 8/10. I would have liked to see a few things reverted back to the way Logic 7 worked, maybe a few new plug-ins, and the bounce in place not working thing: it seems that that would be a pretty big bug in my opinion, I'm not sure how it got by Apple, but I do know the pool of testers is smaller that in the EMagic days, so who knows.

It took about 45 minutes to install the basic apps, and the extra apple loops I didn't have, on a Mac Pro (I don't need the surround reverb impulsed or the 22 gigs of music tracks). My Mac Book Pro took about 1.5 hours for the same content. This is a huge improvement to the Logic Studio 8 installation.

So... anyone else have it, and what do you think about it?

George Leger III
 
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audio file name lengths

George,

Thanks for posting your first impressions. I was wondering...

Does Logic 9 finally support long audio file names?

thanks
-j
 
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No it doesn't. Seems that is just cuts them off, rather than add the "344xps" mystery text and numbers it used too. At least, that's what I have seen so far. I do have to admit only doing a long file name once so far.
 
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Yea, it's a tiny thing really compared to older Logic Pro upgrades. No Manuals, well, any large ones, just a CD sized document, one about 150 pages (Intro to Logic Pro), one about 100 pages (Mainstage 2), and then a 20 page install manual.

About 10 inches by 10 by 3 or 4 inches... so small I was wondering if I was a real upgrade when I first saw it.

George Leger III

George
 
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I spent some time working with the new Takes/Comps functions, it looks like a lot of long awaited features have now been built in. First of all, there are two modes, quick swipe on and off. It is possible to toggle between them, there is an icon in the upper right corner of the take, left of the takes folder menu which enables toggling. With quick swipe on, it is possible to quick swipe a comp as was the case with Logic 8. Toggled off, it is possible to use the scissors tool to make cuts in individual parts of a take. Alternatively, use the marquee tool to select an area, switch back to the pointer and click in a marqueed take region to cut at the marquee boundaries. It is then possible to move these cut parts within the take, they may be copied using the alt key, it is also possible to remove pieces of a take once cut.

Another useful feature is auto colorize. This can be switched on in project setting -> general-> audio. When recording a take, each pass is colored differently, making it quite a bit easier to distinguish parts of a take.

I recorded several multipass takes using the auto color option. I then quick swiped, toggled quick swipe off, cut at the borders of the swipes, removed everything else, then dragged the remaining selected takes onto one take lane. This was very easy to do and worked well and intuitively. I then tried dragging parts around, copying some of them. Again, no troubles, it was very easy.

More to follow ...

kind regards

Mark
 
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Markdvc said:
I spent some time working with the new Takes/Comps functions, it looks like a lot of long awaited features have now been built in.
[snip]
More to follow ...

kind regards

Mark
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting this Mark (and George). I am eagerly awaiting delivery (due tomorrow) and appreciate reading these descriptions. Keep 'em coming.🙂
 
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I've just spent a couple of hours with it. Working on my first gen white Macbook with
2 Gigs of RAM.
I've been working on a track which may be a bit buggy (Logic doesn't always quit)
In Logic 8 I had tracks frozen and I was getting the usual overload errors. The whole track was falling over itself and I was fighting to work on it.
Loaded it up in Logic 9 and it played flawlessly from The FIRST hit of the space bar !
I unfroze everything and it still worked. I added some more stuff and I eventually got some overload messages but hey...Pretty impressive. Seems to me to be much more CPU efficient. I got 1 freeze when I changed Audio buffer settings and had to force quit but that may be because my song is Buggy from 8.
I haven't even played with the new stuff yet, but if it gives me this much more power from my old faithful Laptop then it's definitely worth the 160 quid.
I am looking forward to playing with the new audio features though 🙂


John Adams
 
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Just wanted to share few observations of Logic 9 🙂
First, love the warped drum beats and stuff..also quite educating to check the demo disc and get a closer look at how bands do what they do 🙂
I also think I found a bug or then it's something new but I can't change tempo anymore by double clicking it and entering the new tempo ? it just keeps whatever was set ?

Cheers
 
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Also wanted to add some first impressions:
WOW.
Logic 9 seems much more responsive and 'smart' to my music devices changes than before.
It seems to load a bit faster than the prev. version, also it switches from an absent coreaudio device to a valid one faster and I like the very clear message you get when it's the case and when it detects the built-in audio is still available:
" The previously selected audio interface is not available.
The built-in audio inputs and outputs of the computer will be used instead for this session. "

Also, I love the new green 'oscilloscope' color for the track EQs that you can see from very far.
From what I already saw, There's a LOT of little (sometimes not so little!) changes that makes our logic experience better 🙂
And I would confirm than the new FLEXTIME engine ROCKS 🙂
I just can't stop using it anymore !!
It needs some experience to exploit this powerful new feature in an optimum way, but it's really fun to use and useful from the beginning !!

Just used the quick comping multitake to record some guitar tracks , then used FLEXTIME to adjust my best multitake slices: SO EASY!!
I remember 20 years ago, when I spent a full night recording a (long) guitar solo on tape, punching in it, today it would me take less than an hour for a similar (if not better) job 🙂
 
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Fabulowsky said:
I like the very clear message you get when it's the case and when it detects the built-in audio is still available:
" The previously selected audio interface is not available.
The built-in audio inputs and outputs of the computer will be used instead for this session. "
Click to expand...

I agree completely. Every version of Logic has been getting more, er, "Logical" in its wording of error messages, and Logic 9 really took a great leap in this regard. Another very nice feature of this version!

From what I already saw, There's a LOT of little (sometimes not so little!) changes that makes our logic experience better 🙂
Click to expand...

Agreed. The more I play around with Logic 9, the more little things I find that I really like. For example, the fact that with Auto renaming chosen, tracks and channel strips finally all share the same name is a real gem to me! It's not a "big ticket" feature like Flex that's going to sell new copies, but it sure makes my life easier, and Logic more fun to work with!

Orren
 
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Orren Merton said:
! It's not a "big ticket" feature like Flex that's going to sell new copies, but it sure makes my life easier, and Logic more fun to work with!

Orren
Click to expand...

This is what really interests me about L9. Let's hear more about those little improvements. We all know about the big new features, but the little things can really count.
 
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i loaded it last night, so far so good. i did post a thread wondering how i can get some of delay designers setting from logic 8 back... see my post...
 
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i will not buy it, i'll pass this time.
this is like logic 8.1 but they want us to pay for it, also i expected sound diver to be integrated within logic...
Too bad sound diver is still beta and bugged for OSX and yes, i'm and old sound diver owner, i just want to continue using my software!!!
Also 10.5.7 required and no more support for PPC.
I'll pass this one, until i've got a new intel and i've enough money to upgrade my pro-tools cards (and money to buy Waves, as you probably know 😉 )
 
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Orren Merton said:
tigerman said:
Also 10.5.7 required and no more support for PPC.
Click to expand...

There are many reports by now of Logic 9 running successfully on 10.5.x and PowerPC based Macs.

Orren
Click to expand...

yes you can use it changing the systemversion.plist, even on intel machines you can use it with older than 10.5.7, just install the latest quicktime and change the version in the plist file.

btw i've tried installing it on a 10.4.x PPC with no luck, the installer doesn't go after the serial request, it just does nothing, i've tried also taking out the logicpro.app from the package but when i launch it closes immediately, there's something else that has to be installed probably, i would like to try a full install to see if it really works.

i know it works with ppc but they're not supported anymore, so basically if you have troubles it will never be solved, as i work with TDM troubles are usually on daily basis 🙂

Btw i've tried it on a Hackintosh and the Flex stuff is amazing, most important thing is that the Ableton's like "warp" that logic does is much better than Ableton's one in terms of quality.
Unfortunately i can't upgrade to leopard right now, also i'm still with protools 7.1 so i should buy also the 7.4 update.. so... enjoy the new features also for me 🙁
 
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tigerman said:
btw i've tried installing it on a 10.4.x PPC with no luck, ...
Click to expand...
Actually you were very lucky beeing unsuccessful. I heard of bad experiences. Don't try that, Logic does not run on 10.4 and you can f*k up your whole system if you manage to install it. As you suspect, some other files need to be replaced and if you do that too, you are dead. Not personally, but Logic-wise. You might not be able to update it properly afterwards and I am not sure about the influence on other programs. It's a nogo, only good to test your backup strategy.
 
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