Logic Studio review

Finally, after three years of gossip, rumour and wild speculation, Logic Pro 8 is here.

It has a new umbrella name, Logic Studio, and a couple of interesting new friends in its smart box; the debutante Mainstage and the more familiar Soundtrack Pro 2. The XSKey dongle is no longer required. And the total price has dropped by over half.

Those are the headlines; what of the details? In essence, Logic Studio is an application-wide refinement, concentrating on streamlining the workflow and avoiding the temptation to pack in ill thought-out innovations of dubious value.

There's certainly a lot of it: the full install will eat up 46GB of your hard disk. Even the most bare-bones, just-the-applications install demands 7GB. Most of the extra content consists of Apple's Jam Packs (all five titles are included in the box), sound effects, surround loops and music beds, much of which can be installed on a different drive. Any legacy versions of Logic are retained on your hard drive, although the improvements in Logic Pro 8's audio timer engine are a compelling reason to leave the 6 or 7 versions behind, with longer songs now handled much better.

Immediately on launching Logic Pro 8, we were struck by the crisper, cleaner interface. The visual style is lighter and graphically tighter - Logic Pro 8 now looks every inch an Apple Pro application, cut from similar cloth as its peers, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Aperture and so forth.

Principally, having been the butt of 'multiple windows' jokes for years, Logic now presents a single-window interface, with tabbed access to the most commonly used working environments at the bottom (Mixer, Sample Editor, Piano Roll, Score, Hyper Editor) and icons to launch other useful functions at the top, such as the Library browser windows, shortcuts to List views (Event, Marker, Tempo and Signature), the Colours palette and a button to launch the Bounce dialog.

Most tools and tasks in version 8 are no more than a mouse click away, especially given the proliferation of context-sensitive, well-stocked right-click menus. However, you are still free to configure multiple windows, appropriate for dual-monitor set-ups or favourite screensets.

Many feature requests that users have been crying out for have been introduced, such as sample-accurate audio editing in the Arrange window, post-pan sends in the mixer, instant track configuration for multi-out instruments, and improved notation capabilities. Additionally there is more helpful ReWire support whereby devices in your Reason Rack can be directly accessed through Logic's Library browser.

There are also many unexpected delights (the What's New document covers 35 pages) such as the fact that the mix window can be set to mirror the layout of the arrange window, hiding or showing tracks accordingly. There is also a new low-latency mode, an automated instant fix when overdubbing to avoid having to disable multiple plug-ins across a mix.

Naturally, a new version of any sequencer wouldn't be complete without new plug-ins. Logic's compressor is now a very cool tool, with its sidechain, parallel compression feature and different operating modes like opto, VCA and FET for a variety of flavours.

Other features include the new Delay Designer, MicroPhaser, Echo effect and Binaural Panner plug-ins, plus an improved Space Designer and true surround versions of existing core plug-ins to go with Logic's ability to import, record and bounce surround productions directly to DVD-Audio.