Releases for 2020..... Ableton, Apple, Presonus

[machinesworking]

Logic is so friggin good I've pretty much stopped waiting for updates. Whenever one comes It's gonna be a nice bonus.

For some reason I never stick with it, but in terms of features it's hard to imagine what they're going to add to Logic. It really is a complete solution.

They could always finish updating the graphics on all of their instruments and effects. I would love an update to Ultrabeat with a sane updated interface instead of that drum designer monstrosity/hack. The same for their synths. Logic's synths still sound amazing for their age, but the UI on them really do them a disservice.

Better Midi routing without having to resort to the Environment would be nice. Better routing in general would be nice. I also don't like the way busses work in Logic.

Other than that I think Logic is pretty much feature complete at this point. It has pretty much everything you could ask for in a DAW.

Mostly I want the same flexibility with controllers you get with every other DAW I use.
Logic doesn't differentiate by port, only MIDI channel, this is such a basic faux pas in terms of MIDI that it's hard for me to go back to Logic. I bought it a while ago for it's MPE and note expression maps, as well as porting old Logic 8 songs etc. But I can't get back to using it when you can pretty much only address a single controller at a time without some serious Environment work. It's just a PITA compared to Bitwig or Reaper. Even DP10 is quicker to set up an MPE instrument and say my MPK88 controlling a Kontakt piano patch, and it doesn't natively support MPE.

Beyond that it's great, but it's an ancient flaw, so who knows if it will ever be addressed? Probably as likely as Live getting native SysEx support without a Max hack.

[jonljacobi]

I think they could do a lot with the interface. Especially the way its drawn with the combination of bitmaps and routines. It seems slow even on my fastest Mac. And yes, ESX24 and others are badly in need of the new style interface found in the latest FX. It's been a long while since 10.4, so who knows?

But in terms of functionality... What's missing?

[machinesworking]

I think they could do a lot with the interface. Especially the way its drawn with the combination of bitmaps and routines. It seems slow even on my fastest Mac. And yes, ESX24 and others are badly in need of the new style interface found in the latest FX. It's been a long while since 10.4, so who knows?

But in terms of functionality... What's missing?

The aforementioned MIDI port limitation for one.

Clips, DP, Bitwig, Live and even Cubase to an extent have a Scene firing type workflow for building songs, be cool to see that in Logic.

Mainstage Not sure why Apple decided to make this a separate application? CPU wise that's makes some sense, but for electronic music, and general tweaking it would have been or would be cool to see it integrated the way DP integrates Chunks as songs into a setlist, with all the ability of a DAW to do things like teach a vocalist, other players etc. a part of a song.

Thieving from other DAWs
- Run Command is by far the most useful feature in DP, it's a Spotlight style search and execute command for key commands. This is beyond fantastic in practice.

- Everything in Live pretty much can be incremented with the arrow keys after selection, super useful and quick for minor adjustments.

-Reaper and DP are skin able.

- Spectral editing

Right now you can buy for around $50 all the expression mappings for all the major orchestral libraries etc. from some third party developer, this should have been an in house decision, take the time and just make it easy on people, there aren't "special" mappings.

Logic used to be the most CPU efficient DAW out there, it's not anymore. DP, Bitwig, and Reaper all have similar or better CPU performances. No reason for this when they have better access to the inner workings of OS X than anyone else.

There are more, basic UX WTF? moments etc. all DAWs can use improvement.

[andypryce]

Logic needs a snappier Audio engine. It is so slow. For example take the song out of cycle at last bar/beat etc and Logic still plays like it is still in cycle for a few seconds. Same for the browsing loops. Also Core Audio resets and reloading every plugin again with buffer change should be gone already.

[jonljacobi]

Yeah, I'll agree on the audio engine response. I occasionally get the feeling that Logic is held together by spit and duct tape.

[Kalamata Kid]

SAMPLITUDE PRO X5 is scheduled to to released in April of 2020.
My interest is how well ARA2 will be implemented.
https://www.magix.com/de/musik/samplitu ... r-special/
ARA2 is rarely mentioned so I have my doubts.
edit: I found one mention of ARA2 so there is hope.

Email I received:.
The new Samplitude Pro X5 Suite
New features available from April 2020:
» Even more creative possibilities with ARA2 support
» Multidimensional parameter adjustment controls with MPE
» New WaveColor waveform display
» Monitoring section for easily switching between playback systems
» New Tempo Track function for track & timing automation
» Steinberg SpectraLayers Pro 6 + version 7 upgrade

[jonljacobi]

BTW https://logicproxthemes.blogspot.com/

It actually themes much better than Reaper which still leaves you with those Windows 98 dialogs. Reaper is a program that would quite likely dominate the market completely if they let a professional get their hands on the interface. Fantastic features, performance, and stability with a face only a mother could love.

[Jace-BeOS]

BTW https://logicproxthemes.blogspot.com/

It actually themes much better than Reaper which still leaves you with those Windows 98 dialogs. Reaper is a program that would quite likely dominate the market completely if they let a professional get their hands on the interface. Fantastic features, performance, and stability with a face only a mother could love.

Like Blender, Reaper’s UI ideology is institutional. Don’t expect much in the way of deep changes to ever be made there.

[andypryce]

Yeah, I'll agree on the audio engine response. I occasionally get the feeling that Logic is held together by spit and duct tape.

Spot on

[machinesworking]

BTW https://logicproxthemes.blogspot.com/

It actually themes much better than Reaper which still leaves you with those Windows 98 dialogs. Reaper is a program that would quite likely dominate the market completely if they let a professional get their hands on the interface. Fantastic features, performance, and stability with a face only a mother could love.

Those are terrible, I mean some people like skeuomorphic over everything else, not for me though. What would be nice in Logic are things I doubt will ever happen. I have no use for volume and pan on every track taking up screen real estate, I take care of that stuff in the mixer, but Apple has certain things it does UX wise, and one is to limit choices that might confuse newcomers, so the volume fader stays in the tracks.

Reaper is a sad case, DP is at this point the only DAW I know of that gives you a dozen or more choices for GUI, and some of them aren't bad. Reaper could be amazing, but it's simply a developers DAW, awful layout. they should allow a real graphic designer UX person to take a crack at it, but they simply don't care..

[jonljacobi]

Terrible?

[machinesworking]

Terrible?

Sorry, I just really don't see the point of simply making a knob or button more life like, and calling it a new skin. Other people love that stuff, I would rather see real change, 90% of those mods have the same color scheme. Compare this to DP10 for instance, the 30 odd skins change the look drastically with varying degrees of skeuomorphism.
https://motu.com/en-us/products/software/dp/features/

[jonljacobi]

Some of the are a lot more extensive than that, however, I get the point. I just wouldn’t say terrible. I never tried DP’s customization. I’ll have to look into it.

[jonljacobi]

I just downloaded the DP demo and it's unfathomably slow rendering on my 5K (iMac running Windows) display. The themes seem largely color sets, and while it's not skeuomorphic in the Logic Pro Themes blog sense (not all are you know, there are quite a few that simply mimic other DAWS), it's still the same metaphor.

Also, they need to compensate for high resolution in the initial dialogs. I had take off my glasses and get within inches of the display to type in the info necessary to open the program. I'll try it on macOS but if it's no faster, that's a no-go right from the start.
edit: Mac version is much better, but still lags...

[machinesworking]

I just downloaded the DP demo and it's unfathomably slow rendering on my 5K (iMac running Windows) display. The themes seem largely color sets, and while it's not skeuomorphic in the Logic Pro Themes blog sense (not all are you know, there are quite a few that simply mimic other DAWS), it's still the same metaphor.

Also, they need to compensate for high resolution in the initial dialogs. I had take off my glasses and get within inches of the display to type in the info necessary to open the program. I'll try it on macOS but if it's no faster, that's a no-go right from the start.
edit: Mac version is much better, but still lags...

Of course if you're comparing it to Logic, the GUI is not going to be as fast. I don't find the rendering that slow compared to the rest of the DAWs on my system, (Reaper, Reason, Live, Bitwig, MPC2).... The entire interface is scalable, it's command + or - on OS X, probably control for Windows.

In terms of little things, like non compensated dialogs etc. DP has a way to go. They seem to be shifting gears, hopefully they keep up. I'm a fan, but they are stuck between the old and new, and need to patch it together slightly better, then they would have a monster.