In normal cases, with most software, a point update isn't necessarily cause to break out the party hats and noisemakers. But in the world of digital audio workstations, they can be significant—and that certainly seems to be the case here, at least as far as our initial impressions are concerned.
Ahead of the announcement, we got to spend some early hands-on time with a pre-release version of the software, running on a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display that Apple loaned to us. We're already working on our full review of Logic Pro X 10.1. But for now, based on our hands-on experience over the past five days, here are some of our favorite upgrades in this version of Logic Pro X.
Compressor: Logic's venerable compressor—always a good sounding, flexible plug-in—gets a huge visual upgrade, with different faces for each of the main modes. There's also a new dbx 160-inspired Classic VCA emulation mode, and everything is eminently more tweakable. The interface also scales perfectly to 5K Retina levels, if you've got one of the fancy new iMacs.
Plug-in organizer: Finally, after years of messy, nested third-party plug-in menus, you can now organize your plug-ins however you wish. You can make them as neat as Logic's own bundled plug-ins, as well as mix and match between them in different folders.
10 electronic drummer personalities: Drummer brought some serious session player chops to an automated drum track in Logic Pro X 10.0, but it was largely focused on acoustic playing. This time around, Logic gets drummer personalities for techno, house, dubstep, and other electronic and hip hop styles.
Region-based automation: Now you can write automation directly to a region, instead of having it only on a track-by-track basis. That makes it infinitely easier to tweak performances and then move those clips around, or loop them, without having to copy the automation over and over again.
Real-time fades: Instead of generating audio fade files that bundle with each of your projects, fades are now computed and performed in real time. That's more flexible and requires less overhead; it speeds up project load times, and it means they now work with Flex Pitch.
Electronic drum manipulation interface: Tweaking and livening up an electronic drum, dance, or hip-hop percussion performance requires lots of pad manipulation and knob twiddling. It's very different than, say, telling a live drummer to play a busier or "rushed" beat. Logic now has the facility to change the interface to better match what an MPC programmer or TR-909 wizard would expect for creating grooves with exactly the right feel. And the new Drum Machine Designer lets you customize electronic kits to the same level of precision as the original Drum Kit Designer.
Brush tool: This alternative to the traditional Pencil tool lets you paint notes across the Piano Roll with a single mouse gesture. You can add measures and measures of hi-hats, for example, or set it to a scale and add instant harmonies with a swipe of your mouse.
Smart Quantize: Ever quantize a track, only to realize later on that you killed off those nice piano trills or strummed guitar samples? Smart Quantize looks for groups of notes in a line and figures out where you meant to be off the grid on purpose, and cleans up only the other notes that are on their own. In other words, it proportionately corrects your performance and preserves what was intended.
Wavetable synth upgrade: In Retro Synth, you can now drag a waveform to the Wavetable module, and it will automatically look for pitched information and turn it into an instrument you can save, play, and further tweak. You can also stack up to eight voices now, and the general sound library gets over 200 new synth patches and 10 Mellotron string machine instruments.
As before, Apple Pro X 10.1 will cost $199 for new users; otherwise, it's a free update for existing users. It's available in the App Store starting today.
Apple has also unveiled Logic Remote 1.2 for the iPad, which offers a Logic and Audio Unit plug-in view, and MainStage 1.3, which includes the new Compressor, Retro Synth, Plug-In Manager, and sound library updates, as well as an Auto Sampler for capturing your hardware synths and turning them into virtual instruments. MainStage 1.3 costs $29 for new users, and is a free update if you already own it; MainStage and Logic Pro are also available in the App Store beginning today.
There's plenty of other good stuff, such as the ability to control compatible Apogee interfaces right from within Logic, and the ability to tweak visual EQ with multi-touch in Logic Remote 1.2 on an iPad. You can even finally collapse the Piano Roll view to show you only those drum track lanes that are being used; no more hunting around for a lone splash cymbal up by C7.
But is all of this enough to keep Logic Pro X at the head of the pack? We'll have a full review very soon; stay tuned.
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