An alternative to Logic

[Sascha Franck]

Thanks for the Bionic Delay reminder, Devon et al.
I've been using it before and it's nice. Unfortunately they didn't do the StereoDelay as well, but I'll try what you (Devon) mentioned with the Dan Brown one.

As far as the rest of this thread goes, can't we just get back to some at least "sort of normal" discussion?
I mean, I'm always truly interested in replacements for the Logic plugins. I'm teaching PC sequencing using Cubase and I seriously miss some plugins.
And while it should be clear that not all of the internal Logic plugins can be replaced by freeware easily (some can't even be replaced by commercial ones), it doesn't harm to know about possible alternatives. There's no need to either defend or bash the Logic plugins to death.

Still, one word about the arpeggiator in Logic: It's pathetic, sorry beej. It's completely beyond me why Logic has to be in play mode in order to have it work at all. Further, if you ever tried Cubase's Arpache or EnergyXT's arpeggiator, it just becomes all too clear how outdated the Logic one is (along with most of the environments "MIDI FX"). And of course you can chain multiple arpeggiators in Cubase and eXT as well - eXT even allows for parallel arpeggiators, so it's pretty much like Logic, just that you can actually define the notes the arpeggiator is supposed to play.
Really, apart from touch tracks (which can be quite something...), the environment is an outdated thing. Building custom hardware control surfaces is nothing else but a super laborious job (and believe me, I've done that myself, so I'm rather familiar with it), this is realized WAY better in SX 3. And regarding MIDI FX Logic has close to nothing on offer (unless you fiddle yourself to death). Then, if you want to re-use any environment "patches", you gotta import them into a new song (rather than just selecting a preset, which is what other sequencers allow for), still a source for troubles. Really, while the environment's MIDI functionalities were kickass tools until, say, 3-5 years ago, they're not up to date any longer at all. Regarding that, Cubase is kicking Logics butt big freaking time.
And yes, I'm still a Logic afficionado...

[derek]

(...)
And what about the StereoDelay? (...)

as i said before, after my list you either get the idea or you dont want to. i wont go into a "but XY suits my workflow better" or "i need parameter Z in a plugin or i will die" discussion. as i said from the start, i dont need to convince you.

Wow. Why don't we just sample the other synths then. We would never need to buy anything else since we can sample everything.

well, you cannot sample a synth nearly as good as a fender rhodes. of course you knew that, so youre just argueing for the sake of argueing now. trying to "come out on top of a discussion" or something here? ;-) you know, i will happily go knee deep into a "emulating instruments in real life: physical modelling vs. sampling and the pros and cons of both appraoches" discussion with you, but since thats actually deep stuff and an interesting discussion that would deserve a thread far enough away from the schoolyard atmosphere here, id say lets open another thread for that (notify me if you do).

(I have the fishfillets, tried the ambiance plug and others..)

sounds kinda evasive to me. i nowhere mentioned ambiance (dont like it too much and its not freeware either if i remember correctly, allthough i could be wrong because as i said i didnt like it so its "not on my radar" so to say). so, does "fishfillets, ambiance and others" mean that of my list, you really only know the fish fillets?

You are distorting the thread once again. (...)

lets see - you ignore my entire list of plugins, go to the part where i say a rhodes is better simulated by samples than by physical modelling, construct a statement out of that that i would suggest one should simply sample synthesizers and then behave like thats more or less all i said?
sorry man but thats really lame. i listed many many many plugins by name, i even did a search for the names of some true gems that i use regulary in the studio yet didnt remember the names of, i wrote a list thats so long that spaceman started hallucinating, and you behave like i wanted to sample synthesizers? thats pretty low man. you know what, spin my post in any direction you want, if that somehow makes you feel better, more power to you. i recommend you download stuff like the IQ4 anyway. cause you know, thats some seriously cool stuff right there. may not fit saschas idea of workflow 100%, but man, its a true killer plugin. kills the logic multiband IMO as well as commercial products like waves C4 or the UAD one (which in my personal opinion is not quite as good as its reputation anyway). you dont have to openly ackowledge that, but you would do yourself ("and every member of this band") a disservice if you wouldnt download it ("and beat the shit out of the f**king cowbell") :-)

That's a big one Derek. Let me restate it. That is huge!!
Your opinion is heavily biased against Logic for personal reasons, which might be very good reasons for all we know, I am not debating that.
Don't you think that distorts the way you perceive Logic

well of course is does :-) so what :-) thats why i make no secret out of it and make sure to be very open about that. i dont know how many times i have to say that to you, but I AM NOT TRYING TO CONVINCE YOU or convert innocent logic users or anything. yet, i can still talk openly about what i think, and when i think that plugin A has plugin B for breakfast, i say so. think thats a big deal? dont take it so seriously. its just a plugin. theres thousands of plugins out there. thats kind of the point, you know :-)

making you see everything in absolutes such as Kill, Suck?

nah sal thats not fair. you challenge me in a dramatic way to list plugins that in my opinion kill the logic plugs (repeatedly asking me for the exact wording "kill", obviously in an attempt to "rub it in" to me or something), and then i post that as requested and then its not right either? and one moment my list is too aggressive, the next moment theres no list and i suggested to just sample it all? maybe you should decide what you want to accuse me of before you post ;-)

you know, for the record, i dont think logic sucks completely. yes, its bad luck that logic is so lacking in areas which are the most important to me. i dont forgive a program if its not sample precise. a PDC thats "mostly right but not always" is not good enough for me because i work a lot with multimicrophone recordings where the phase relationships of the individual mics are important. and i need quick, fast and efficient audio editing a lot, thats the other weak area in logic. theres cool stuff in logic too, i like how you can have the same arrangement open several times, the grouping is a lot better than in nuendo and thats quite an essential thing, its got digi support (allthough i would always take the protools software over logic, unless its a pure midi project), the midi part is a bit messy in my eyes but thats of course a question of being used to it (see "sascha and the workflow of the stereo delay" for that) and from an objective standpoint i would say the midi part of logic is up there with the best.

so, no, not everything in logic sucks and not everything else kills. when i say stuff like "to me, anything is a viable alternative to logic", i am kidding, i am saying that to make sure everybody sees where i come from. but the plugins i listed, i wasnt kidding there. try them out! really really cool stuff. dont miss it. ever had to deess a vocal during mastering, and all you had is the mixdown? a precise deesser that only lowers that one band is nice for that. even better is a tool where you not only limit your processing to that frequency band, but also to the middle, where the vocal sits, leaving overhead mics and other stuff alone. this is state of the art stuff i would have paid a lot of money years ago (and also did, many times), these days, you get stuff like that for free. whats so hard to accept about that? celebrate it!

Don't you think you are doing a disservice to the person who's trying to decide which program to buy, without at the very least, disclosing your personal agenda against it? Don't you think he/she deserves to at least know where you are coming from so as to take your comments in a certain perspective?

yes he/she deserves that. thats why i was very open about that in my very first sentence, and that you pretend that i somehow tried to hide my atittude to logic is not only bad style but about as unrealistic as it can get. look me up on KVR (you obviously already did shortly after i posted the list, instead of trying out the plugs in the list, for whatever reason) - you can say a lot about me, but not that i make a secret about what i think about logic as a whole. no way LOL :-) and you know, since i have practical reasons to not like logic, its perfectly fine when i talk about the program. who knows, they might have the same preferences as me and then they wouldnt have much fun with the program either. you can turn this around anyway you want, but you wont get a "derek should not be allowed to participate in host discussions" out of it. sorry bout that :-)

If I posted on the Nuendo forum claiming to have spent some time with it and found free stuff that kills some of the functions Nuendo is famous and generally praised for, would you not challenge me to back up my statements with facts?

sure i would. and i also then would check out the plugins. i have absolutely NO ideologic interest in "defending nuendos factory plugins". what do i get from that? as i said, look me up in the nuendo forum if you want. the best place to find me is in wish list threads where i go on steinbergs nerves :-) you think that pluginlist was long? you havent seen my nuendo wishlists :-)

Would you not try to discover if I have any economic or personal interest in my agenda against it?

well, everyone has the average "my host is the coolest" agenda to a certain degree, so theres not a lot of surprising stuff to look for.
you think thats a big deal? i dont think its a big deal. its just a bunch of f*****g computer programs. slaves! shut up and do the work!
and yeah, after all is said and done, i like nuendo the best, followed extremely closely by samplitude, then nothing for a while, then "pain is so close to pleasure" protools which in some regards absolutely rocks and in other regards absolutely sucks, and then logic. dont know the rest of the bunch good enough to comment. there, thats my "agenda" :-)

Especially after some posts you realize that I don't really know Nuendo that well and may have not used it to its full capabilities?

oh, i have used logic often and long enough to have a very well informed opinion about it. i could go to the emagic forum right now and write yet another post that goes on forever with a buglist and a feature wishlist. i do know the program. i do know the ESses, the clavinet (a keyboarder of a band i recently recorded used that thing ALL THE TIME :-), the EVP, the organ, the physical modelling thingy, and since i work so much with audio and mixed entire records in logic, you can believe me that i know the plugin list quite well. im a plugin freak, and i usually dont open one plugin but two of the same type and then decide which one i like best. i compare plugins a lot. of course you dont have to believe me :-)

Would the simple fact that you are trying to show me that I may have overlooked some functions or area of the program make you a Nuendo fanboy?

well, considering how you bascially tried to pretend my 58765344 page post consisted of nothing but the statement "all synthesizers should be sampled", i would say, thats not exactly the same thing as "trying to show that i have overlooked some functions". sascha did that by pointing out to me that the EXS has been updated in certain regards. thats absolutely fine. so the EXS has caught up in some areas, nice. i still think vsampler is another league because theres still the entire rest of my list (and the chromatic or name depending automapping features sascha listed arent unique to the EXS but stuff vsampler has been doing for years, so thats just more catching up there), but yes, thats how you do it. but not stuff like "so you think a rhodes sounds better sampled than physically modelled - well, why dont we sample all synths then" which later mutates into, i quote, "There's no need for the physical modeling plugs since we can just use samples". notice the subtle difference? :-)


@putte: heeeey putte! *wink* heard about the good news? if not, email! me! now! :)

[beej]

Still, one word about the arpeggiator in Logic: It's pathetic, sorry beej.

No need to be sorry!

A single arpeggiator object in itself is nothing earth shattering but it does an ok job. What I was trying to get across is that one object on it's own is really a basic building block. By using a combination of stuff, differeent keys going to different arpeggiator objects, delays, transposers, chord memorizers etc, you can get some mental stuff happening that *any* single arpeggiator would not be able to do. Of course, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but for the tinkerers or if you're looking for inspiration it can be really cool.

It's completely beyond me why Logic has to be in play mode in order to have it work at all. Further, if you ever tried Cubase's Arpache or EnergyXT's arpeggiator, it just becomes all too clear how outdated the Logic one is (along with most of the environments "MIDI FX"). And of course you can chain multiple arpeggiators in Cubase and eXT as well - eXT even allows for parallel arpeggiators, so it's pretty much like Logic, just that you can actually define the notes the arpeggiator is supposed to play.

Okay, I've not really used them so I don't know what I'm missing out on...

Really, apart from touch tracks (which can be quite something...)

Hehe, I've got a nice story about that...

the environment is an outdated thing.

I start getting really nervous when people start going in this direction, usually whe people start along the lines of "It's too complicated, no one uses it, it should be removed..."

I do kind of agree, that short of some extra meta events and tweaks to some existing objects, the core of the environment is largely the same as it was in version 2.0 of Logic back in the mid-nineties. I'm not quite sure what really can be done about it, while not breaking compatibility for earlier songs, and yet modernising and improving it. I mean sure, the interface can be made a little more accesible, and some of the functionality that's tricky or flaky like environment importing can be improved. While having song-based environments is cool, there's also the downside of having song-based environments, rather than the songs just loading into your current audio interface environment, stuff like that.

I can think of lots of cool stuff to put in, but at the same time, adding some of the cooler stuff for tweakheads, something akin to Max programming for example, is effort that a lot of Apple's userbase won't even get into, so you have to question the development effort involved.

I mean, MIDI is *probably* less important these days to a higher percentage of people than it once was. Sure, most of us use MIDI keyboards and controllers, but more and more people don't have huge real-time MIDI rigs to control, instead doing more audio and virtual type stuff. Apple kicked SoundDiver under the carpet, I'd hate to see them dumb down Logic's MIDI capabilities.

But anyway, there's lots of stuff in Logic like this, where the core technology and interface have been neglected while effort has been spent elsewhere (including the time/pitch machine, DSP factory functions, the sample editor, audio editing in general and more). I'd love to see all that stuff made 'topmodern'. In fact for me, audio editing, the sample editor, and top-of-the-class Melodyne-a-like audio manipulation facilities are the big things I'd love to see radically overhauled/added/improved, along with some sucky workflow areas, and probably an EXS and editor overhaul.

I'd take those over improving the plugins any day, and if they could get those done right... whoa mama..!

[derek]

But anyway, there's lots of stuff in Logic like this, where the core technology and interface have been neglected while effort has been spent elsewhere (including the time/pitch machine, DSP factory functions, the sample editor, audio editing in general and more). I'd love to see all that stuff made 'topmodern'. In fact for me, audio editing, the sample editor, and top-of-the-class Melodyne-a-like audio manipulation facilities are the big things I'd love to see radically overhauled/added/improved, along with some sucky workflow areas, and probably an EXS and editor overhaul.

if i MAY comment on this...currently, the app to keep an eye on is samplitude IMO. nuendo features acid/ableton style realtime timestretching and pitchshifting plus classics like recycle (or "apple loops", if you want), but samplitude goes even a little further and already has a somewhat melodynish editing interface. of course the quality is not yet up there with melodyne (say samplitude users, dont have any first hand experience with it), but the trend is clear. i would say that after the midi featuritis race of the early 90s, the "catch up with the real audio daws"-audio functionality race of the late nineties, the mostly workflow related early "2000s" (how do you say that anyway), this is the next big thing for the world of native sequencers. its gonna a fun ride, and its gonna be interesting what digidesign does about that, because protools is falling seriously behind in this area.

[beej]

Maybe Apple needs to buy Celemony out...

[derek]

*imitates that ridiculously cheesy darth vader cry from SW3*

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"

[machinesworking]

if i MAY comment on this...currently, the app to keep an eye on is samplitude IMO. nuendo features acid/ableton style realtime timestretching and pitchshifting plus classics like recycle (or "apple loops", if you want), but samplitude goes even a little further and already has a somewhat melodynish editing interface. of course the quality is not yet up there with melodyne (say samplitude users, dont have any first hand experience with it), but the trend is clear.

Digital Perfomer has this as well. I've heard DP isn't big in europe, but it's got it's fans here in the states. I'm waiting to get paid to upgrade to 5 and see what DP offers since 2.7!

http://www.motu.com/products/software/d ... ation.html

[Sal Handsome]

sounds kinda evasive to me. i nowhere mentioned ambiance (dont like it too much and its not freeware either if i remember correctly, allthough i could be wrong because as i said i didnt like it so its "not on my radar" so to say). so, does "fishfillets, ambiance and others" mean that of my list, you really only know the fish fillets?

Whenever possible I check out both freeware and demos (ATM I have the demos of FM 7, Albino 3, Imposcar, MX 2.0 on the machine. All good stuff)

so, no, not everything in logic sucks and not everything else kills. when i say stuff like "to me, anything is a viable alternative to logic", i am kidding, i am saying that to make sure everybody sees where i come from.

Wow, I think we are finally agreeing! Had you typed this paragraph pages ago, it would have saved all of us a whole lotta typing.

but the plugins i listed, i wasnt kidding there. try them out! really really cool stuff. dont miss it. ever had to deess a vocal during mastering, and all you had is the mixdown? a precise deesser that only lowers that one band is nice for that. even better is a tool where you not only limit your processing to that frequency band, but also to the middle, where the vocal sits, leaving overhead mics and other stuff alone. this is state of the art stuff i would have paid a lot of money years ago (and also did, many times), these days, you get stuff like that for free. whats so hard to accept about that? celebrate it!

Cool thanks for the info. Will check them out as soon as I can.

oh, i have used logic often and long enough to have a very well informed opinion about it. i could go to the emagic forum right now and write yet another post that goes on forever with a buglist and a feature wishlist. i do know the program. i do know the ESses, the clavinet (a keyboarder of a band i recently recorded used that thing ALL THE TIME , the EVP, the organ, the physical modelling thingy, and since i work so much with audio and mixed entire records in logic, you can believe me that i know the plugin list quite well. im a plugin freak, and i usually dont open one plugin but two of the same type and then decide which one i like best. i compare plugins a lot. of course you dont have to believe me

How do you like the Ringshifter? It's quickly becoming one of may favorites.
As far as starting the other thread, sorry I have no interest and would have very little to contribute, even though I am sure it would be very educative.
Good luck.

Sal

[Sal Handsome]

Maybe Apple needs to buy Celemony out...

You're not kidding! I own Melodyne UNO and it's really good stuff.
Now imagine it within the arrange page in Logic...
Here's hoping,

Sal

[derek]

Digital Perfomer has this as well. I've heard DP isn't big in europe, but it's got it's fans here in the states. I'm waiting to get paid to upgrade to 5 and see what DP offers since 2.7!

http://www.motu.com/products/software/d ... ation.html

yeah its not very popular where i live i guess. i have *never* seen it and have absolutely no idea about the program. one could think that it doesnt even exist and its just a running gag the americans like to make ("look, i told those european idiots about that legendary sequencer nobody has ever seen and got away with it AGAIN by claiming that its popular here in the states he he he").

;-)

guess its a pretty good program, you usually hear mostly good stuff about it. damn fanboys ;-)

[machinesworking]

guess its a pretty good program, you usually hear mostly good stuff about it. damn fanboys

It's been around longer than Cubase or Logic, maybe longer than Sonar? I used Performer in 86! They had a huge chance to take over the native market according to the Bomb Factory developer, but took a few wrong turns in 2001 or so. I switched to Logic then, because of a few bugs DP had at 2.7. Took longer than anyone else to switch to OSX, and by that time Apple had marketed Logic as the! DAW to use with a mac!

Since then DP keeps on adding things I like, so I'm curious to see how it's turning out? The Melodyne type stuff is definitely appealing to me.

As a side note, it wins hands down the contest for easiest to look at, uncluttered GUI out there.

[Sascha Franck]

Really, apart from touch tracks (which can be quite something...)

Hehe, I've got a nice story about that...

I start getting really nervous when people start going in this direction, usually whe people start along the lines of "It's too complicated, no one uses it, it should be removed..."

I'm not saying it should be removed at all, and for some things it's not complicated at all. For instance, I'm always having a bunch of transformers available that I activate through little switches, visible in small float windows on top of my secondary arrange screenset (basically octave switchers, velocity modifiers, a handful of funny chord memorizers and some arpeggiators). You still can't have all that in other sequencers (with the exception of Energy XT perhaps) - at least not that comfortable.

I'm not quite sure what really can be done about it, while not breaking compatibility for earlier songs, and yet modernising and improving it.

IMO, they should just leave the environment alone (well, ok, some functions and looks could be improved) and rather either add a new class of objects to load MIDI FX into (including a preset menu) or (sort of the Cubase way) add MIDI inserts to all available MIDI objects. Both methods would have their advances.
In any case, that way there'd be no environment backwards incompatibilities.

In addition, for those still using more or less complexed external hardware synths and FX, another new class of "studio objects" could be added, allowing you to build your own hardware controllers for whatever things easily. I know, it's all possible already, but as mentioned before, the process can't be called "easy" at all. In SX you can basically just build yourself hardware controllers that easily integrate into the rest of the GUI, look like a VST track, behave pretty much like it, offer presets and automatic totall recall (instead of "send all fader values" which I always had troubles with) - and even integrate fine into the mixer (something environment objects defenitely don't do that well).
Really, while I never exactly tried it (due to the lack of much external devices - so I actually don't know whether it's all buggy or working fine), it seems as if Steinberg has gotten it right with that.

I can think of lots of cool stuff to put in, but at the same time, adding some of the cooler stuff for tweakheads, something akin to Max programming for example, is effort that a lot of Apple's userbase won't even get into, so you have to question the development effort involved.

Yeah well. I don't think such stuff belongs into a "regular" sequencer anyways. Which reminds me of some *very* sad thing: When I'll finally be making the Mac switch, I'll probably be missing EnergyXT more than anything else. Now, it's not a Max-alike environment at all, but with a proper selection of 3rd party addons, it can do quite some nifty stuff. The great thing about eXT being that you can actually have audio cables (instead of the standard host "track-send-group-bus" routing) that you switch or flip around by whatever MIDI messages and the likes. Apart from all this allowing for some serious time saving things (such as saving layers of instruments and FX, with all the required key splits and whatever you may desire), it's also a great experimental playing field. You can for example build yourself incredible morphing synth patches, fading around between different synths while at the same time altering various parameters of both the synths and whatever FX, all triggered by your ModWheel - I know, this (which is still some "easy eXT" thing) can somehow be done in Logic as well, but in eXT access to all the required actions is sooo much nicer.
Is there any proper modular subhost for OSX?

I mean, MIDI is *probably* less important these days to a higher percentage of people than it once was. Sure, most of us use MIDI keyboards and controllers, but more and more people don't have huge real-time MIDI rigs to control, instead doing more audio and virtual type stuff. Apple kicked SoundDiver under the carpet, I'd hate to see them dumb down Logic's MIDI capabilities.

Same here. But then, see above, I think they should rather expand this stuff and add a few new sections to the program. MIDI FX can be really cool...

In fact for me, audio editing, the sample editor, and top-of-the-class Melodyne-a-like audio manipulation facilities are the big things I'd love to see radically overhauled/added/improved, along with some sucky workflow areas, and probably an EXS and editor overhaul.

Seconded on all points.
Regarding Melodyne-a-like features, I'm almost sure we'll see that in each of the major hosts more or less soon. Now that Samplitude has started with it, the others simply can't stay behind.
And regarding the EXS, apart from an editor overhaul, they should finally add a high quality interpolation mode (just as NI has done with Kontakt in the last update). That thing is aliasing as hell on extreme pitchings.

I'd take those over improving the plugins any day, and if they could get those done right... whoa mama..!

Again seconded. However, to make the plugin package truly competitive, they should perhaps finally add a really great EQ and compression section. Derek is actually right about them in saying that even freeware can replace them easily.
I mean, mixing essentials are EQs, dynamics, a few modulation and room FX. The latter is done well, but IMO the former should be covered better.

Oh, and btw, what I'd wish for: A "totally integrated" sampler/slicer. This should cover slicing in the arrangement (which is still *very* poor) and some functionality like "beam to sampler, automap slices and create a MIDI file". Should work in both directions, so you could as well drag audio files from your sampler into the arrangement (for further mangling and the likes). In addition, the created patches/grooves/patterns should be previewable in song tempo.
Logic would be the perfect host for such things as the plugins are tightly integrated, so there's no problems with "where to save the files" and whatever issues.

And probably another biggie of mine: Partbased editing and freezing. This is just incredible in Samplitude, when some dude showed it to me a while ago my jaw was all dropping through the floor.
Basically you can apply whatever effect to whatever portion of your material and have it running in real time (example: Autotune on just a single syllable, rather than cutting that one out, bouncing and re-adding it). Cubase does at least have that in its audio editor, but Samplitude is just the bomb as thing can run in realtime as long as your machine doesn't start to sweat. In that case you just freeze the effect in - but, unlike in other programs, you can still move, cut, copy and do whatever to the part. And you can still go back to the unaffected version easily. Incredible, really - I couldn't imagine these things to be implemented any better.

[fandango]

*imitates that ridiculously cheesy darth vader cry from SW3*

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"

http://vadercoaster.ytmnd.com/

[spaceman]

@derek

well derek, I'm always wiling to admit my mistakes.. and it does seem I didn't read your 20 page post all that accurately. I still strongly disagree with the status of 'killer' of many of the plugs you've mentioned and you've left out a viable alternative for quite a few plugins altogether (ES2, SpaceDesigner, Ultrabeat, Sculpture..) so I still believe your statement of 'easily make a list of many free logic plug killers' is still at the least a big exaggeration. As for the swear words.. I don't like being called a fanboy.

I'll leave it with that.. the discussion has moved on

[spaceman]

Is there any proper modular subhost for OSX?

not really.. all I can think of is Bidule, and although I really really like it, it's not all that stable as a vst in say Logic