Logic 7 released

[Robert Randolph]

bleh. I like Digital Performer better.

oh wait, I dont do music on macs... still gotta talk about it though.

[DevonB]

Well two mitigating factors for you:

They last longer, since RISC chip development is slower than CISC (due mainly to market forces, though, no technical explanation).

Hmmm... no competition = who cares how slow we are! The technical term is "milking it". Intel and AMD have been in a war for years pushing the envelope. Competition speeds up development.

The resale value is way above PCs. My 933 is still going for $900-1000 on ebay. Try that with a PC.

Again, fairly obvious when you can buy a Mac for how much we want to sell it for or you can get... ummm... a Mac for how much we'll sell it to you for. This follows the golden rule - those who have the gold make the rules.

Devon

[sidrat]

logic7 - still NO plugin delay compensation!

[h4nc0]

I know, just worked on a DP G4 today, was amazed how fine it played some songs done on a G5 2x2. Well OK, had to deactivate one space designer and bounce one Absynth track, but that was about it (and the G5 was allready pretty much loaded).
Still, in case I'm getting a Mac I'd like something really fast, suiting my needs for, say, 2-3 years at least.

Really??? So getting a dual G5 2.5 won't be much faster than AMD64 3200+ system I have?

[egbert]

Wait a minute - you guys aren't seeing the big picture here. This is an Apple product. It's gonna be perfect.

And remember the takeover was like 27 months ago so the interface must have been totally redesigned to take advantage of the G5 Supercomputers and God's OS - OSX.

C'mon - you won't even recognize the program - it will have the footprints of Apple mavens all over it. You will probably just think of an Eq change and it will do it. Like - Automatically! Apple is going to totally own this industry. Fuhgedaboudit.

Personally I can't wait to break out the plastic.

G5 Supercomputers? God's OS is OSX? C'mon. You must be talking about the old testament God. G5's have again and again been shown to not be all Apple has cracked them up to be.

What? You are thinking maybe it has some leprosy in the warp and in the weft?

Whomsoever toucheth a Mac shall be unclean until the even.

Thou shalt not behold the nakedness of thy Mac's Command Line Interface - that is for grown-ups.

That sort of stuff?

Sorry my friend - I succumbed to temptation - I was taking the piss

Everything I have read about this release - the first wholly built under the aegis of Apple - over the last 27 months has come to fruition or has it?

This beast is not a complete redesign interface wise. It seems more of a "logical" extension of the program following the same path of development as it has from Logic 3 to 4 and onward to the present day. Apple has not transformed it beyond integrating the addons and restricting the platform to OSX. Which must surely be because it is God's OS

The extension of processing to other Macs is a good marketing move - sell more Macs. It is also something that has already been done by FXTeleport so I don't think it needed a computer vendor to make it happen.

Eg

[marc]

logic7 - still NO plugin delay compensation!

Wrong. Logic has had some plugin delay compensation for many years now.

Correction: Still no plugin delay compensation for busses and auxes. That's what's been the problem (and it is a serious problem, however, definitely not the same as "NO plugin delay compensation").

[Sascha Franck]

Do you have any experience with Guitar Rig and/or Amplitube and still you desire Logic's Guitar Amp?

Yes.
Tried both demos and actually worked with them on some other studio machines.
Still, if I was using an emulation on these occasions (rather than a real amp which I still prefer), I'd usually reach for either the POD or the VAmp.
That's why I never bought Amplitube (and didn't consider buying Guitar Rig either).
Sure, recording the dry guitar signal and having access to any tone forming parameter later on is tempting (you could still "re-amp" those signals as well of course), but then, I usually know what sound would be required for a certain part, so it's not that much of a biggie. And of course, no matter whether I'm using a real amp or a simulation, sometimes I'm recording the dry (splitted) signal anyways, just in case...

However, from the sound clips on the Guitar Amp page it seems that this would finally be something I would indeed prefer over all of the mentioned solutions (most likely apart from real amps). Finally the clean sounds don't seem to be as weak as on the others and the gritty ones sound pretty much like the real deal to my ears.
But then, nothing beats some hands on experience, so I gotta wait.

[egbert]

Re the Distributed Processing thing:
The distinction between the native processing and proprietary DSP models is blurred by this move - whole computers are being used as DSP farms.

The business model looks to be more restrictive than ProTools. With the old Mix systems - you could only run plugs in the proprietary TDM format but they could be created by 3rd Party groups - who of course charged exorbitant amounts for them. If you wanted more DSP power - whack in another card. With Apples version - if you want more processing power - whack on another Mac: X Serve, G5 Tower or whatever. The expense is comparable.

Realistically this is what studios will do - the marketting material portrays networking a Powerbook and a G5 (what a a consumer Macophile is likely to own) but in reality the current Laptops are so far down on power it is only really the dual G5 machines which would be worth connecting for people running a studio. (I guess this is not entirely true in the case of the EXS24 - memory and disk throughput may be the limits rather than CPU cycles so you might get significantly bigger orchestral arrangements to play with a PowerBook with ext drive and a Tower.)

The thing about TDM vs Apple's distributed processing scheme is that at least TDM worked with 3rd party plugs. Apple's scheme only works with its own plugs. Your studio full of networked Macs is becomes more of a proprietary little island each day. And all your hardware will eventually become obsolete at a stroke of the marketing department's pen some years down the line.

If Apple could make the distributed processing work with other plugs like FXTeleport they would inspire more confidence IMO.

Eg

[Sascha Franck]

Really??? So getting a dual G5 2.5 won't be much faster than AMD64 3200+ system I have?

It will be *faster* regarding some of the optimized plugins, pretty much noticeable for Space Designer (also, ES2 seems to be extremely efficient).
In case they didn't finally fix this, audio performance however will be very poor, unless you're using additional drives (and even then it won't be as good as on most stock PCs using proper UDMA/S-ATA controllers). This is a Logic issue, btw. Under SX performance is quite a lot better.

About the "feel": Unless Emagic hasn't been adressing things, you will feel like working on an aging PC. Graphic redraws, screenset switching, opening plugin windows and the likes are amazingly slow compared to any halfway modern PC.
OK, I only work on 2x2 machines, but it shouldn't be a machine issue but again some Logic thing. OSX per se feels relatively snappy.
Well, IMO any file organisation based things are really clumsy as IMO the finder is defenitely one lousy file handling tool. For instance, you can't easily sort objects by type (OMG, it's 2004...), at least I haven't found a proper method yet to do that quickly.
There's quite a lot of things that I find to be really weird on Macs. For instance, when connecting my mobile USB drive it's taking ages (sometimes several minutes) for the drives to show up, whereas on my PC it takes seconds. This doesn't seem to be a machine based thing as it happens on all the Macs I worked with recently.

Oh, and one highly annoying thing I only found out about recently (I thought this must've been sorted by now, but it isn't): You can't use keycommands in float windows on Macs. Pressing Backspace won't delete a selected note in a floating Matrix but would rather delete the source sequence from your arrange page. And while on Macs you won't need float windows that badly when working with dual monitors, it's still a major drag when working on single monitors, making more or less extensive use of float windows (which is what I'm pretty much used to).
Seems to be an OS related thing though - elsewise I couldn't understand how Emagic didn't access that yet.

[AD80]

OK, I only work on 2x2 machines, but it shouldn't be a machine issue but again some Logic thing.

Only 2x2's?? Thats the machine that knocked that guy clear through a wall of his house and into a tree. That thing is powerful.

[Sascha Franck]

I guess this is not entirely true in the case of the EXS24 - memory and disk throughput may be the limits rather than CPU cycles so you might get significantly bigger orchestral arrangements to play with a PowerBook with ext drive and a Tower.

EXS tracks are exluded from the distribution thing (as stated in the PDF I think), so an external drive would bring some power to a powerbook, but the extra tower wouldn't help in terms of EXS performance.

[Janne]

The thing about TDM vs Apple's distributed processing scheme is that at least TDM worked with 3rd party plugs. Apple's scheme only works with its own plugs. Your studio full of networked Macs is becomes more of a proprietary little island each day. And all your hardware will eventually become obsolete at a stroke of the marketing department's pen some years down the line.

If Apple could make the distributed processing work with other plugs like FXTeleport they would inspire more confidence IMO.

Eg

Yes, for the initial release the distributed processing is for Logics own plugs, but it depends on that most (if not all) AU's on the market today is not written to be used in this way. Apple is heading this way, the AU spec have all the mechanisms outlined for this but most AU's have been quick ports of VST and have not taken use of this methods. Mostly because no-one understood why certain abstraction would be good.

The intention from Apple is that anyone will be able to make an AU that will run distributed if the user wants to.

My guess that Zebra will be the first 3´rd party to the table!!

Janne

[egbert]

EXS tracks are exluded from the distribution thing (as stated in the PDF I think), so an external drive would bring some power to a powerbook, but the extra tower wouldn't help in terms of EXS performance.

OK - so the Distributed feature is a little half-baked at this point. It is well behind the FX Giga and Teleport systems which allow composers who use big arrangements (the sort of people who need these features) to run samplers on whole racks of machines.

This tends to support suggestions that this is Apple distorting the priorities of development - away from what is musically most useful and toward what the bean counters think will move more boxes.

Eg

[egbert]

OK Janne - that is more encouraging - any AU could potentially use this feature.

[h4nc0]

It will be *faster* regarding some of the optimized plugins, pretty much noticeable for Space Designer (also, ES2 seems to be extremely efficient).
In case they didn't finally fix this, audio performance however will be very poor, unless you're using additional drives (and even then it won't be as good as on most stock PCs using proper UDMA/S-ATA controllers). This is a Logic issue, btw. Under SX performance is quite a lot better.

uh oh. I have AMD64 running 2 raptors in RAID0 mode. Nvidia 6800GT graphics card. It's very fast, but I expected the dual G5s to be even faster.