Paul White packs up his multitrack and confronts Notator Logic Audio's recording environment of the future.

In a nutshell, Notator Logic Audio is an enhancement to the Macintosh version of Emagic's Notator Logic sequencing program, designed to provide the ability to record, edit and arrange audio data from within the MIDI sequencing environment. The audio comes courtesy of Digidesign's Pro Tools, Sound Tools or Audiomedia II digital audio hardware, which you will obviously need to buy if you don't already own a system. The Pro Tools hardware permits four channels of simultaneous recording and playback; if additional Pro Tools NuBus cards are utilised, then up to 16 channels of audio playback can be achieved. Emagic imply that to enable the system to work comfortably with four or more tracks, one of the newer 68040-based Macs (ie. Quadra, Centris) is a good idea. Having watched my trusty IIcx creak during the course of this review, I'd probably agree with them.

The Sound Tools or Audiomedia hardware permits 2-channel simultaneous recording with 4-channel simultaneous playback, and in all cases a fast, large hard disk drive is needed as the system gobbles up approximately 5MB of disk space for every track-minute recorded. Whatever Mac is used, it should be fitted with at least 8MB of RAM (16MB is recommended). The software is designed to run with System 7.0 or higher and requires 32-bit addressing to be turned on (in the appropriate Control Panel).

Notator Logic Audio is integrated within the MIDI sequencing framework of Notator Logic, so anyone thinking of upgrading simply replaces their old software with the Audio version. To prevent unauthorised copying, a separate security key is included; this connects in series with the Macintosh's ADB keyboard or mouse ports and in line with the existing Notator Logic key, which is also required. Installation is routine and all the necessary files are provided on disk, including two Digidesign files (the DAE driver and one 'init') essential to the operation of the system.

THE AUDIO APPROACH

Recording audio is straightforward once you've set up a few basic parameters, such as telling the system on which hard disk and in which folder you'd like your audio data stored. Depending on the hardware used, you'll be confronted by a window containing either two or four VU meters, and each of these has a Record status button beneath it and a Monitor check box above it, enabling you to hear what you're doing as you record. There's no way to set the signal level from within the program, so you must adjust the level of the incoming signal in order to maintain a healthy level that doesn't clip on the peaks. You also have to set a maximum recording time, to allow the system to make the best use of the available disk space.

It's important to recognise the differences between the way the Notator Logic Audio system is set out and the way a tape-based system works. For example, you can leave your mic or instrument feed plugged into the same audio input for the entire project — it will still record onto whichever audio track you select in the Arrange window. Furthermore, the audio can be dragged from one track to another and can be sent out via any of the Audio Interface's audio channels.

The original recording is made in the Arrange window, just as though you were recording MIDI information; the only difference is that an 'Audio Object' has to be selected for recording rather than a MIDI Object. The audio recording may commence at any point in your song and the usual count-in may be used, as may auto punch-in/out.

After recording the audio data file is placed into the Audio window, which is best thought of as a library containing all the recordings made during a particular song. It's also possible to import audio files, from other Logic Audio songs if required; in fact, the program will import any files created in Digidesign's Sound Designer II format. In this window, the start and end times of the playback Region can be modified; this doesn't change the original data but simply dictates how much of it will replay.

Other than the start and end points, it's also possible to move the Region's anchor — a freely definable point that might be thought of as the cue point for the Region. For example, the logical anchor point for an audio track that starts with a reverse snare sample would be the actual snare strike, not the reverse build-up which comes before it. A small padlock icon, to the left of the Audio window, allows edited Regions to be locked to prevent further changes, once you're happy with them, and a Loop Play function may be used when changing the start and end points, to provide audible confirmation that the edits are exactly where you want them.

SAMPLE EDIT WINDOW

More detailed editing of the audio is possible in the Sample Edit window, where some of the 'destructive' editing processes familiar to Sound Tools users can be brought to bear. Here pauses may be replaced with silence, whole sections may be reversed, gain settings may be changed or normalised, fade-ins or fade-outs achieved, the phase inverted and so on... Because such editing processes are destructive — ie. they permanently modify the stored audio data — it is important to keep in mind that any changes made here will affect each and every usage of that Region in the Arrange window.

More powerful editing comes in the shape of the Strip Silence tool, which works rather like a noise gate to identify periods when nothing is happening. The user sets the threshold and any signal falling below this level is considered to be silence. But there's more to this facility than simply muting of pauses; Strip Silence can be used to automatically divide a recording up into separate Regions, a new Region being created wherever there is a pause. These newfound individual Regions, each of which is automatically allocated its own anchor point, may then be moved independently. If you have the patience to use this kind of powerful processing on a drum track, for instance, you can even break it down to individual beats and then quantise them! To prevent sounds from being clipped by this process, pre-attack and post-release times can be set, and the best news is that all this is non-destructive — the original sound file remains intact.

ARRANGING

To place an audio Region in the Arrange window, it is only necessary to drag it from the Audio window and position it where required, in much the same way as you might with a block of MIDI data. Multiple Regions can be created from the same recorded segment, so if you've sung a whole song in one take, you could easily break it up into verses, choruses and so forth, then rearrange them to your heart's content later. Regions may also be copied and pasted in the same way as MIDI data. Thankfully, this doesn't eat into memory or disk space, because the Regions depicted in the Display window are really 'aliases' or ghosts of the real data in the Audio window.

Although the system can be thought of as a 4-track recorder with editing, there's no reason for not having more than four consecutive Regions of audio in the Arrange window, providing you don't want more than four audio parts to play back at the same time. Think of it rather like keyboard polyphony, but in this case the most recently added audio Region on a track always takes priority. If two Regions overlap on the same track, the one that started playing first has priority. The Region 'underneath' will become audible once the first Region has finished playing.

Notator Logic Audio tries to make audio Regions behave as close to MIDI data as possible, and this extends to providing MIDI control over certain parameters such as Delay, Panning, Level, and even EQ via a single-band parametric. If desired, this MIDI data can be recorded to provide a degree of mix automation, and basic mixing into stereo can be achieved if you don't need to add further effects. If you do want to add further processing, then it's best to patch the discrete audio outputs, from the hardware, into a conventional mixer, where they can be mixed with the audio outputs from whatever MIDI devices are being controlled by Notator Logic Audio.

One obvious point, but worth making anyhow — the data within an audio Region cannot be quantised and it's not possible to loop an audio Region in the same way as you might loop a MIDI sequence. However, because the data may be copied and pasted, it's an easy task to emulate a loop of finite length simply by pasting several copies of the same Region end-to-end. The Scissors tool may be used to split audio Regions within the Arrange window, but you can't use the Glue tool to join Regions together.

IS IT WORTH UPGRADING?

After an hour or two's familiarisation, you should be able to start some serious work using Notator Logic Audio. Ideally, your sequenced MIDI parts should be almost completed before you think about adding audio tracks, such as vocals or lead guitar, for this will give you a good guide to play against. If you just want to use the program as a tapeless 4-track, that's fine, but you would be missing out on its many exciting editing capabilities. For example, in a typical song, you might want to take the best chorus and paste it to all the chorus positions. Alternatively, you might want to create a more realistic double-track effect by running one take of a chorus alongside another, perhaps with just a slight delay added. Instrumental riffs or stabs can be copied and deployed as required, guitar solos can be chopped up and rebuilt to create the solo you always wanted to be able to play, and if you feel that the whole song warrants an extended remix, with Notator Logic Audio you can rearrange both the audio and the MIDI data in one go.

On my old Mac IIcx, the software ran reasonably smoothly, though I found it impossible to make real-time changes to the EQ with the audio running. There was also one instance where the playback stopped and a dialogue box whinged about my hard disk, but allocating a little more memory to the program seemed to help. Of course, a Quadra with 32MB of RAM would be nice...

There are lots of nice aspects to this program, not the least being that you get a visually useful overview waveform inside the Region boxes on the Arrange page. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any facility for merging or mixing two or more audio tracks (files), which would have been welcome, but to Emagic's credit they have tried very hard to make the audio data as easy to manipulate as the MIDI data, and succeeded.

Overall sound quality is excellent (largely a function of the Digidesign hardware), though you do need some form of external mixer to bring your inputs up to line level in order to record. Ultimately, Notator Logic Audio will incorporate virtually all of the editing features of Sound Tools — or so I've heard from a source close to the company — but even as it stands, the editing facilities remain quite impressive. If you already own Sound Tools' Sound Designer II software, and it's quite likely you will if you have the Digidesign hardware, audio files created in Notator Logic Audio can be opened in Sound Designer II and edited using the additional facilities available from that program. For example, clicks and glitches can be 'drawn' out and there are much better EQ facilities. And if you also own DINR (Digidesign Intelligent Noise Removal) software, audio tracks can be 'cleaned up' before being returned to Notator Logic Audio. As ever, a review of complex software like this can't cover all the details as thoroughly as they deserve, but I've a suspicion that many of us who work mainly with MIDI instruments could perform the majority of our work on a system such as Logic Audio. Audio Regions may be locked to SMPTE timecode for those interested in music-to-picture work, and for general music recording it's often sufficient to record a real singer and lead guitarist, then employ MIDI synths or samplers for the remaining parts. With the addition of a simple mixer and a couple of good quality, versatile effects units, Notator Logic Audio can turn a simple home MIDI system into a powerful and very professional music production facility — and one that'll fit onto the top of an office desk at that. Best of all, this is one of the few products that I've been able to review and write up simultaneously with both my word processor and Notator Logic Audio on screen together!

Further Information

Notator Logic Audio £225; Notator Logic £349. Prices inc VAT.

Sound Technology plc, (Contact Details).

Note: According to Sound Technology's Mark Gordon, the Notator Logic and Logic Audio manuals are being updated and a new user guide, containing worked examples, is due for release before the end of this year. This will be made available to existing Notator Logic users for a nominal charge. Tutorial videos are also in the pipeline.