stubborn logic pc users still hanging tough?

[lowkey]

I used to use Logic. I bought Sonar. It has alot going for it but it was not quite right for me. The nearist thing on the PC is EnergyXT. Check it out if you have not already. I dont know if you can load it up in Logic though. The combination of Trackton and EXT is pretty amazing too.

[A_Witt]

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ChimeraMan,

I couldn't have said it better myself. If you can switch from Logic to another program than you didn't need Logic. I have worked in about every major studio in Los Angeles as an arranger/orchestrator/composer/sound designer, with dozens of composers/producers/writers/directors/library developers/fx studios. I had to learn every host or I wouldn't be called back. I found that I needed to be able to make the sequencer do things that it wasn't originally designed to do (instead of complaining). Cakewalk had .cal routines and very early (win31) I found that these gave me abilities beyond the sequencer design. Then I found the environment in Logic. I worked with Cubase on mac/pc, Performer, Cakewalk and Logic mac/pc at this time and found that the environment set Logic above the rest for me. I got a powerful pc because it seemed things were going that way. When I heard the news that Apple was looking for an audio company to enhance the engine side of programs like Final Cut Pro I got curious. Things seemed to fall through with Creative Technology then the race was obviously on for Steinberg and Emagic. As far as I'm concerned, Emagic won. By design the future would give us a fantastic video/audio program that would knock Avid/Digidesign down a few notches. It wasn't long before a major video editing software company would buy Steinberg, coincidence? It seems to me that Apple/Final Cut Pro has a brighter future than Pinnacle and I'm glad to be on the former side. When Apple bought Emagic I was driving several pc's with Gigastudio/Kontakt using midi over lan from Musiclab and was very concerned about switching to the mac because there was no midi over lan yet. In June '04 it was looking like I was going to be able to switch back to mac since there was overwhelming requests to Musiclab. I got a dual G5 and absolutely couldn't be happier. Midi over lan CP for OSX came out in early August, happy day. Switching OS's is no big deal, they can both get the job done and I have been more of a pc user since I am also a sound designer and Sound Forge has no rival on the mac (yes I use Peak) so this isn't coming from a 'mac guy'. Give me a pc, I'll make money with it, give me a mac, I'll make money with it.

I rely too greatly on the Logic environment for customizing. For example, the VST architecture doesn't allow for tempo reliant visual effects. I use several visual effects for a metronome so I'm not being beaten over the head by the metronome while playing a subtle non-quantized oboe part. One of my visual metronomes even visually follows the gestures of the conductors hand. This isn't possible in any other sequencer. I have made some of the environments that i use regularly available for free at
http://gate.tenhauser.com (http://gate.tenhauser.com)
and they are updated regularly. I make them available because I was helped when I needed to create several of them and believe that kind of help should be returned (mostly Oink & technohazard on sonikmatter forum). I don't hold back any but it is difficult to make them user friendly to other people so it does take time when I've made updates for myself.

In a nutshell, I have no choice to change sequencers for my composing. Logic may not be a superior sequencer, but it is superior for me and I could and have spent hours explaining why, doing clinics, and helping professionals make the switch. If something comes along and does the job better/faster I will drop Logic easily, I am a die-hard-nothing.

A_Witt

[Sascha Franck]

Before I start: I will buy a Mac rather soon because I am somewhat addicted to Logic (for whatever reasons) and need to stay up to date (for various other reasons).

But anyways, the WORST thing by far isn't that a Mac cost's that much money but that it's a poor machine, at least when running Logic on it.

A few examples:
- Audio performance is PISS POOR under LogicPro.
Hasn't got to do anything with OSX per se but solely with Logic. Other programs don't suffer from that.
In Logic, max. trackcount when using the internal disk is around 50% compared to any mediocre Windows PC. Even using an extra HDD doesn't help that much.
This is proveable - I just made some tests on two Macs, so it wasn't that one of them has been faulty or so. The folks on the LUG (Logic Users Group) are stating the same.
Whenever I buy a new computer (especially at that price tag) I expect audio performance to be NO issue at all. With the G5 all of a sudden it IS an issue again - at least for those recording things such as doubled choirs over and over.
But as said, that's a Logic issue as Cubase doesn't suffer from any such problems (what is it on Emagics website? "Pipelines instead of bottlenecks" or so - those dudes really have a weird sense of humor).

- Screenset switching and related things are just as lousy as it could get. I feel like being back on my P 200.
First to be said being an OSX issue, this now is a lie. OSX in general is behaving pretty much snappy graphic-wise, just Logic still isn't. It's slow and there's redraw errors galore!

- No VST support. No, I don't necesarily want VST support, but in case I allready have all my most used plugins as AUs allready, their settings should be compatible to their appropriate VST settings in older versions of Logic.
When Emagic started supporting the all-so-shiny AU format it has been said there would be NO compatibility issues between identical VSTs and AUs.
A lie, nothing else.
LogicPro won't load any setting automatically when loading a VST-in-use-song into LogicPro, no matter whether you allready took care of not using anything non AUI-VST-x-platform anymore.
"Plugin Battery not found" - Bah, f**kers - it's all there in the all so great AU format!
And as if that wasn't bad enough allready, all of your old Logic-internal presets for VSTs aren't working anymore.
So, to load your old songs properly in LogicPro, what you need to do is to KEEP your old machine (espcially with Macs people often just trade their old ones in), so you can open the old songs before transfering them. Then, you will have to open EACH AND EVERY used VST plugin and save its setting using the internal preset menu.
In case you have a load of Logic format presets you need to load all those first and save them in plugin-internal format.
In case your plugin doesn't have any internal preset menu (example: digitalfishphones Fish Fillets) you're lost. No way to ever load your settings in LogicPro. In that case you will have to write your settings down manually.
How's all that for a great totall recall DAW?

- No compatibility to anything anymore.
"Export to 4.8 format" is completely f**ked. Even when you remove ANY plugins only every 3rd to 4th song will load in any pre-6 version of Logic.
OMF export is completely f**ked. You can't even re-import the just exported file into Logic itself. Audio data is completely distorting, files are missing and even if you used OMF 2, MIDI data isn't present at all.
MIDI file support is almost repoduceably broken (not that Logics MIDI file support has ever been any good, in fact it's the lousiest ever). Any other file may work, but when exporting a bunch of files one after another, chances are that around 50-70% of them are broken.

- Some rather elementary functions are broken since the release of LogicPro, such as sends being used on input objects or record enabled audio tracks.
Renders all the monitoring with FX things useless.

Then, NONE of Logics old-time bugs have been adressed in LogicPro at all. Reclocking is still broken completely, all you can do is using workarounds. The functionality as it is supposed to work like allready is lousy enough, but it even doesn't work.
Environment objects (namely arpegiators) still don't work properly with audio instruments.
Transformers still have a limited feature set, let alone they're looking like a 15 year old DOS program.
Stil no proper layer/multitimbral VST support. Yes, I know about the I/O plugin workaround, but it's not the same and it's lame.
Trackbased automation is still lousy. No way to treat events like usual MIDI events. I am used to tweak events a la hyperdraw. Impossible with TBA. No way to mute, stretch, do whatever with events using the TBA.
Still no real MIDI support for effect plugins. Even in case those offer MIDI learn or so, you can only use them properly in case they appear as instruments as well. In that case you'll be wasting another track in your arrange as well. For anything else things get even worse, you'll end up with a bunch of transformer and eventually cable switcher madness.
No MIDI support for their own plugins at all. sure, there's some modulation options, but in case you wanted to use an external controller as a programmer, you're again lost. Any modern VSTi I know of has extended MIDI learn/assign options. Just Emagics plugins don't. Not even one of them.

So, how's all that for your "best musical production package" (or whatever they may call it...)?

[original flipper]

Hi

I thought I had problems (with Logic!)- you must have a certain (unspeakable) diposition to put yourself through that hoop again with a price tag of £4,000 to buy a G5 and Loic 6 and .....

Flipper.

[Sascha Franck]

I thought I had problems (with Logic!)- you must have a certain (unspeakable) diposition to put yourself through that hoop again with a price tag of £4,000 to buy a G5 and Loic 6 and .....

Well, as for my position:
I love Logics elegance when it comes to terms such as arranging, tool handling, efficiency on the screen and whatever.
I also own Cubase Sx 2.2 and while technically it might be superior, when it comes to *working* on tunes it just can't cope with Logic at all. Knowing the other sequencers more or less well too, they can't either (still, Tracktion looks somewhat like something to watch in the future - but it's defenitely not there yet).
Then, as I am like, hm... the one being responsible for all sorts of computers used in the medialab and studios at the local music university, and as many producers (some of which we engage as teachers for our classes) still are working with Logic (actually, the vast majority of the ones we've been asking), I just need to be up to date with the two most used sequencers over here in hunland. Logic and Cubase that is.
Yeah, I could only work with them Macs at the uni, but I really love to prepare stuff at home, also, it defenitely helps in getting familiar with something when you actually own it.

As for the price: A 2x2 GHz Mac can be bought for around 2600 Euro (and I may even get it a bit cheaper because of Apples educational discounts).
As far as Logic goes: A) I allready own it and b) (all the above mentioned issues aside) it's a great package for the price.
Just don't forget the quality and variety of Emagics plugins. For around 900 Euro you get a fully featured sequencer, a sampler, 2 really great sounding VA synths, a vocoder, the best virtual organ around, a nice e-piano, kickass clavinets, one of the best convolution verbs there is (and low on your CPU it is as well) plus an all around package of really good quality effects. All of those are feeling VERY nice under your mouse - this is something Emagic really has gotten right!

As said many times before, I wholeheartedly agree that Macs are stupididly overpriced machines, but then, their resale value is much higher as for any PC too, so whenever you plan to get an updated one you won't have to deal with some old PC sitting around *somewhere* (recently I've been throwing away a Celeron 300a along with an Abit mainboard and I also have two complete machines doing nothing else but gathering dust).

But then, yes, afterall it's a horrible thought saving that much money for such a thing...
Gonna do it anyways it seems.

[jdg]

i just read this whole thread..

i would like to give you a hug sasha

[DevonB]

i just read this whole thread..

i would like to give you a hug sasha

You read the whole thread? I'd like to give you Visine!

Devon

[A_Witt]

Sascha,

I'm not going to defend logic to you. So you tested it on 2 macs, you certainly didn't test it on my mac. Type "automation" in the search for keycommands. There are 2 keycommands that come up "open automation folder" and "open automation edit." Surprise! Yes that's just one thing out of your rant, it is also a big sign about the rest of your rant. This is not Logic related, it's user related, spend the time with your tools rather than posting rants and you could figure out simple things like that yourself. Making false statements of fact about any program on a messageboard is redundant. Anybody can do that, not anybody can use their sequencer to it's fullest abilities.

I'm not trying to dig at you Sascha but it seems there are better ways for you to spend your energy since you are a Logic user.

A_Witt

[Kajiki]

Sascha is one of the founders of LUG.

[Sascha Franck]

A_Witt, I KNOW about everything about the TBA.
FWIW, I have been one of the folks testing it before 5.0 came out.
And as such I also know what I DO or do NOT like about it.

So, I am aware of the various ways to tweak the TBA, track automation folder included.

I'm gonna give you a quick example though:
When using plain "old" hyperdraw, some of the things I do is to timestretch data. I may fo example just draw a single up/down movement of some filter movement, then copy, loop and stretch to my hearts content.
Another useful thing with hyperdrawn automation parts on separate tracks is the ability of muting individual portions of the automation data.
All this isn't possible with the TBA.

So, no matter how you put it, none of my statements are being "false" or whatever - more like the opposite.
For the above mentioned reasons I know Logic more or less inside out and in this case it has been you somewhat misinterpreting my statements. Might be up to my english (I'm not native speaker) or whatever, but i don't think I've been writing in chinese...

As for the rest of my complaints: just try for yourself. You'll see.

[Per Lichtman]

I'm going to try the memory tips mentioned here but previously I couldn't run more than between 700MB and 900MB of RAM inside Logic 5.5 Platinum (even though I have 3.5GB) and that was one of the first reasons I went shopping for another sequencer. Sonar handles 1.5GB no problem. Also I had issues getting Logic to run Storm Drum. Go figure.

[A_Witt]

Phew, a typical messageboard response, nice and predictable even though I left you the opening by telling you I wasn't digging at you but you still decided to get defensive. Obviously saving face is important. I'll respond in the same manner but maybe next time we can try a different way.

I'm Hans Zimmer and I was using Logic before there were dinosaurs. Well maybe not Hans Zimmer and maybe soon after there were dinosaurs but none of that matters anyway. Good to see you know so much. I know the redraw works great and fast on my mac and on my pc, I don't need to try it to say that because it's something I naturally notice. I'm using dual lcd at 1280x1024 with 75+ tracks with lso's upwards of 2.5 meg (which means a hell of a lot of data), several audio tracks, and average of 30+ audio instruments including samplers with several gig worth of samples, several cpu hungry fx and multiple screensets with environments always running processes. It's fast with no errors. What do you know about that? In the automation folder you can edit automation as hyperdraw info on an object or in matrix, or stretch/compress the info, splice pieces and mute them. Your statement...

"No way to treat events like usual MIDI events. I am used to tweak events a la hyperdraw. Impossible with TBA"

is false. You may clarify or expand on what is true about the statement but the statement itself is false. If I knew there was a possibility of misrepresenting a product because of a language barrier I'd probably ask someone that writes/reads the language since I have all the time in the world to hit the "Submit" button. Since that obviously isn't important to you then it doesn't need to be mentioned. None of what you said negates the fact that your rant is a useless but typical messageboard rant from a person that obviously has the respect of a lot of people. You could rant like that about any program on any system, but why? I am aware of "who you are" and no one needs to point that out to me. If you seemed like a logic warez user I most likely wouldn't have replied at all. Considering the fact of "who you are" even makes your rant worse. I know of a beta tester for Emagic that made statements similar to yours and in that position he was being irrresponsible and disrespectful. So no matter how you put it there's no justifying that kind of rant coming from a person in your position. Fun stuff, surprise me.

A_Witt

[original flipper]

HI

Like the rest of the old farts here you had nothing better to do at the time, than to write what you wrote.

Personally iv'e never heard of either of you, at the end of the day - who gives a shit?

Anyone buying a MAC G5/Logic v6 combo isn't going to buy it based on what was said here (in this post), are they?

Flipper.

[Kajiki]

Where is putte when we need him?

Hey, A_Witt, you don't need to be pissed. Sascha is a German and he's just bluntly stating what he knows. He has helped thousands of Logic users in the past, and I guess it's his job to straighten the "facts" of Logic so that Logic users will be well-informed. Really, no need to be angry.

[Erk]

Well, logic has good points and bad points.
Unfortunately, with most programs that have problems, you expect the "issues" and bugs to be fixed with time, but with logic, the designers seem to prefer to move onto new sexy projects rather than "fix" what they've already produced. No "proper" cut-and-paste implementation on the environment page, no proper context sensitive help, no object popups, and a GUI that's looks like the 1990s never happened. Want to cut and paste a mixer channel with effects between two songs? Forget it. You want user-configurable menus, toolbars and icons/buttons, object popup menus, hint text, an information strip, a consistent set of GUI actions that work the same way on different pages, and some obvious way of saving descriptive info with your file? Well, although every little freeware or shareware graphics editor program seems to have this sort of stuff, logic doesn't. Okay, so part of this is probably because it was designed to be cross-platform back in the days when cross-platform tools like MS VCC+ really sucked, but that doesn't exuse the "type transformation" errors, the buggy folder implementation, and so on.
Logic could have been a truly great program, but instead of going back and sorting out the "housekeeping" issues that were holding it back, we got new features.
Simple things like the sample editing facilities simply aren't very good, maybe they are just not "sexy" enough to lure the programmers into sorting them out, and as a result, it's probably difficult to think of a basic third-party sample editor app that isn't better than logic's section, which is kinda awkward for a "pro" DAW. Okay, so Samplitude was meant to sort out that weakness, but that partnership bit the dust after the Apple takeover.

I bought logic for Windows as a long-term investment, knowing that it had some issues, but believing that emagic had a long-term commitment to improving the program. When they then sold out to Apple, and shut down Windows development, it was supposed to be with the aim of making logic a new, improved, modernised single-OS program, and that apparently /still/ hasn't happened. Instead, they produced a mac-only FIR reverb that was kinda similar to the mac-only FIR reverb that another company was already selling. I guess that writing that was probably much more fun than fixing the bugs.

But the great new idea was supposed to be CoreAudio. Now, CoreAudio did actually get me excited, the Jobs vision of OSX as an integrated unified multimedia platform sounded great, with a single OSX plugin standard that everybody would use, and great new platform features like being able to use multiple audio interfaces ... perhaps we could even justify emagic dropping support for non-emagic formats like VST on logic OSX, if it meant that we got the new OSX dream earlier.
Except, now, in mid-2004, after we had emagic pointing fingers at other companies for not supporting Audio Units fast enough, it seems that the biggest "problem company" re: native OSX-format support is ... emagic. if you want to use Apple's premium software instruments, they aren't available as OSX Audio Units and won't work with any OSX DAW other than logic, and logic itself doesn't yet fully support all the CoreAudio features. So if you want to use multiple audio hardware, you can't use logic, and the OSX DAW that you use instead then can't run your expensive emagic synths.

This situation, where Apple's own premium DAW system still isn't yet fully OSX-compliant, isn't defensible, and the only sense that I can make of the situation is to think that perhaps the whole logic programme has already been wound up, and that perhaps the reason we haven't been getting proper progress on sorting the program out is that perhaps the development work has been going on a brand-new from-scratch OSX-only system, with all the user interface problems addressed, proper support for things like standard multimedia tags, audio units as the native plugin format, and a proper, more open (but OSX-specific) architecture.

Perhaps the recent rationalisation of the logic line with the release of "Logic Pro" was the program's last gasp. Maybe the bugs and kludges will never be fixed. Maybe we are about to get a new, modular system, a sort of "CoreAudio Professional", built around an expanded version of logic's environment page, as a system-level er ... environment ... into which we can embed sequencer objects and AU effects and sample editor objects, and where we load and save environments instead of songs.
That might make sense. A collection of objects that can be used together as a DAW, or sold as a must-have OSX platform extension for people using other OSX media production systems. Maybe have the synths and effects included, or maybe have them available as separate AU packs, so that someone using Final Cut can use a bit of logic reverb, or sequence a bit of MIDI, or so that people using different OSX DAWs can buy the emagic softsynths, or so that you could embed a third-party arpeggiator or midi control unit straight into the environment, or embed different sequencer modules and patch them together, with all the file informaiton from all the embedded objects being stored and saved within the environment.

Of course, a totally modular CoreAudio-on-steroids would probably need a lot of processing power, but luckily, Apple do happen to be in the business of selling us G5s.
But if this IS the game-plan, they aren't allowed to tell us yet. Anyone know how long we have until the next trade shows?