Page 1 of 2

DAW-talk

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 8:49 am
by starfinger
Is it pleasant to mix a lot of tracks/plugins on Logic Pro?

I'm reaching the limits of what I want to do with Ableton Live, and Reason can't handle more than a handful of VST plugins without having CPU issues.

Reaper is ugly.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 4:27 pm
by ken
I didn't love Logic Pro, but I've been a Cubase user for most of my recording life. I didn't like editing and thought that Cubase was much better for that, and MIDI. I liked the built in instruments. The logical drummer feature was cool, but Lunkhead tells me that is in Cubase now as well. The last time I mixed a project in Logic, though it wasn't terrible to do plugins.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:57 pm
by starfinger
the price difference between Logic Pro X and Cubase Pro is pretty significant!

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 6:20 pm
by jb
How many tracks are you talkin'? I use Logic Pro basically exclusively.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 6:10 am
by starfinger
jb wrote:How many tracks are you talkin'? I use Logic Pro basically exclusively.
For me, a lot of tracks is maybe 12-15? I know this is trivial compared to some projects, but the Ableton interface for mixing makes it really hard to use (for example) EQ in a complementary way on many different tracks. I have a hard time keeping track of what’s going on where.

A dedicated mixing view where you can see all the plugins on all the tracks, and some more flexible track routing, would go a long way for me. Does Logic have this? The screenshots make it look like it might.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 9:39 am
by ken
Logic has a mixer view. It seems pretty straight forward to me. Plug ins on top, faders on the bottom. You can basically see what is on each track, but you'd have to open each plug in and look at the settings. I tend not to use the channel strip eqs, but that might be easier for you.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 1:21 pm
by jb
Yah as Ken said, Logic has a dedicated Mixer view (hit Command-2 on your keyboard and it will appear in a new window.)

Logic will be a breeze for that many tracks, whether you are using the track arranger view or just the mixer. I recommend taking some time to learn the basic navigation controls-- how to manipulate the track view to show more or less of the wave forms, how to zoom in to spots, and how to do cross fades.

I have never encountered a "How do I X in Logic Pro" that didn't have an answer on YouTube. It is super deep though, so there is a lot to take in, just like any other DAW.

Works fine on High Sierra in my experience. Benefits from an SSD and as many cores as you can throw at it.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:13 pm
by starfinger
Are you using a lot of plugins with logic?

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 5:47 pm
by jb
I am using schloads of plugins, from softsynths to amp modelers to mixing plugins like Neutron and Ozone and Waves stuff. I'm on a 2012 Macbook Pro with 16GB Ram.
I try to keep to a smart workflow of getting everything into the box before I do a lot of processing of the audio, so that I can increase my buffer and use more plugins before I have to freeze tracks. There is a limit though, and some plugins are super CPU intensive so I have to be aware.
Logic has a CPU meter and can freeze tracks to help manage loads. Basically all the bells and whistles; I probably use 20%.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2018 6:50 pm
by starfinger
Ok sounds good! Thanks for all the info.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 1:00 am
by fluffy
I use Logic Pro as well and many of my songs have dozens of tracks and mixing buses and so on. Also the way that Logic handles track groups now is especially great - each one gets its own little mixing bus.

In the mixer view (which you can also get by pressing 'x') you can also set it to only show the parts of the signal chain that touch whatever track is active. And you can also limit it to things that have a track assigned to them, and a few other things of the sort. It's pretty great.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 6:09 pm
by ujnhunter
starfinger wrote:Reaper is ugly.
Read the whole thread thinking... "Why hasn't anyone said anything about Reaper?" then re-read the first post to make sure I wasn't missing anything... You know you can make Reaper "look" like other DAWs using themes right? You can also customize almost every aspect of it and using Screenshots (I think that's what they're called... Snapshots?) you can have a Mixing Layout or a Recording Layout or any other layout of your choosing with the push of a button. I suggest you look on https://stash.reaper.fm/ before you can truly call Reaper ugly. ;) I wouldn't use any other DAW after customizing Reaper to suit my workflow, plus it's completely FREE and/or will cost peanuts if you decide to license it. Again, I realize you said Reaper was ugly... but as someone who wouldn't use anything other than Reaper going forward... I think you should give it another look before spending money on inferior DAWs. ;)

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 6:36 am
by starfinger
Well, I said “ugly” in a more general sense than just aesthetics. I found it extremely tedious to set up plugins and switch between them, or to route audio in different ways. It didn’t seem worth the effort. Maybe I’m missing something?

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:23 pm
by ujnhunter
Maybe? In Reaper for Plug-ins you just click on the little "FX" located on the track and add whatever you want, then next to the plug-in it shows the order and the names of the plug-ins on the current track, so just clicking on the name switches to the plug-in... and Routing Audio is either done by clicking on the little "Route/Routing" button (depending on Track/Mixer view) on each track and from there you can edit Send/Receives with ease... or as I prefer to use the Routing Matrix (Alt+R default on Windows, or View Menu, Routing Matrix) which I keep as a "Tab" on the bottom of my Screen Layout so I can switch between Mixer, Region/Marker Manager, Track Manager & Routing Matrix. In the Routing Matrix you can see a visual representation of the Tracks/Routing and just click in where you want to send each track...

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2018 10:50 pm
by fluffy
Reaper's UI is garbage that makes my wrists hurt. I had to use it for a project at HBO (because it was using a specialized plugin that doesn't work with Logic) and every time I had to tunnel down through a deeply-nested context menu my heart died a little more. No amount of theming will make it better.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 5:41 am
by Manhattan Glutton
fluffy wrote:No amount of theming will make it better.
I can't disagree. You can achieve extensive customization via plugins, options, and keyboard mappings, but it doesn't get to the root of the problem that a lot of things are simply not intuitive and aren't customizable.

However, Reaper does have advantages.
  • Portability. If I want to pass off mixing a project to someone who doesn't have a DAW or take it on vacation on another computer, it takes about 10 minutes to download and install Reaper.
  • Future proof. The biggest appeal to me was always that my data is not *as* locked in a proprietary format, especially given the philosophy and attitude of the developer and community. The project files are human-readable.
  • Customization. If I don't like something, I can most likely change it to a sufficient degree. There's an SDK if I really wanted to get into it.
  • Price. Can't beat the price of trying the full product indefinitely and $50-ish for major versions.
  • Community. Their forum is active and helpful, people create major features via plugins, tons of free tutorials on YouTube.
  • Developer. It's a small team of developers that started with the creator of WinAmp, who basically could be coasting for life off of his big cash-out to AOL. There are regular free updates.
In the grand scheme of things, these don't necessarily translate to having fun while making music, which is important. I started on Reaper after using a very unstable, pirated, popular DAW that wasn't any better. I also wasn't a Mac user at the time with the expectation of good UX. If I were looking for a DAW today, I might have made a completely different decision.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:31 am
by ujnhunter
fluffy wrote:Reaper's UI is garbage that makes my wrists hurt. I had to use it for a project at HBO (because it was using a specialized plugin that doesn't work with Logic) and every time I had to tunnel down through a deeply-nested context menu my heart died a little more. No amount of theming will make it better.
Care to elaborate on what you couldn't do without going into loads of menus? You can customize pretty much everything in Reaper (at least in my experience), even making your own toolbars and custom actions etc... you can even add more functionality with add-ons like SWS / S&M Extension that I use to auto-color and organize all my tracks for me. Just curious what about it you think is "garbage"? I think the customization is the one thing that puts Reaper above all other DAWs so I'm having a hard time figuring out what you couldn't achieve with Reaper's UI.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 7:34 pm
by fluffy
Its automation interface (drawing/editing automation curves) was terrible. And that's what I had to use it for. I looked into customizing it but found nothing to fix that aspect.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 5:45 am
by ujnhunter
Ah... I don't use automation... perhaps that's why I have no complaints. :P They did update a bunch of the automation stuff recently, not that it would help you now after the fact... but they have things like Automation Items now and the like where you can Save/Import/Export different aspects of automation stuff... might be much better than you remember it or not. ;)

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2018 8:04 am
by jast
fluffy wrote:Its automation interface (drawing/editing automation curves) was terrible.
Can you elaborate a little on how it compares to, say, your favourite DAW in terms of usage? I've used REAPER a lot and now I'm kind of wondering whether I've been limiting myself in terms of automation without noticing it...

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:42 am
by fluffy
Sure, in Logic you can switch into an automation mode where there's a bunch of tools that let you simply draw a curve and it's smart about adding/removing points, setting splines, etc., and all of the different tool modes are accessible from simple keyboard shortcuts. It's also really easy to organize your automation lanes when you're working on more than one at a time, and to also record automation live and copy/paste it between lanes/tracks/etc. and so on.

Oh, another thing I really dislike about REAPER (which I'm sure is customizable but I sure as heck haven't figured out how) is the way the playhead works; in Logic, by default pressing space will toggle play/pause, and you can press enter to rewind. It's also really easy to set the playhead to do a cycle loop in a region, both by drawing out the region and by selecting the area that you want to loop and telling it to use that as the loop section (and then making another selection won't automatically change the loop points, so you can edit stuff without your playhead going all wonky).

There's also a nice solo/isolation mode where it'll automatically solo the regions you have selected, so you can listen to (or quickly bounce out!) just a couple of little pieces of the song at any given time, which is useful both for figuring out how two parts aren't quite working together, or for exporting a loop/stem for ccMixter or whatever.

And speaking of exporting loops, Logic also has a bounce mode where you can export the selection as a seamless loop, where it plays the section as a cycle and lets the tail of the first play bleed into the second play. Makes it really easy to export audio for game soundtracks and whatever (and I'm doing a lot more of those these days so this is very important to me). As far as I can tell, the way to do something similar in REAPER is to export the mix including an audio tail and then hand-assembling it being very careful to line stuff up and even then you have to worry about zero crossings and so on.

Another fun thing in Logic is you can do a 'bounce in place' where it'll export out whatever you have selected into a .wav and then import it directly into your timeline nicely lined up and everything (and by default will mute the source tracks although you can turn that off), and then you can do all sorts of neat stuff to the bounced-out version. Makes handling a lot of effect processing stuff a lot easier (like for things where doing it as a VST/AudioUnit is impractical or impossible, like doing time manipulation/reversing/stretching/splicing/etc.). Again, it's *possible* to do this in REAPER, but it takes many, many more steps, many of which are manual and fiddly.

Re: DAW-talk

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 2:55 pm
by Manhattan Glutton
FWIW, I didn't find Reaper's automation intuitive either, and the playhead/zooming drives me nuts no matter how I change the settings (I'm not sure there is a way to make it intuitive and that's possibly a user defect on my end).

On your last point, that niche is maybe filled with 'subprojects' which were introduced relatively recently. I'm hoping to get a handle on them to cut down on rendering time.