Integrated sequencer and d-t-d software is fast becoming de rigueur for the computer-based studio. Ian Waugh tries out EMagic's contender in this increasingly-competitive market - Logic Audio

One of the star's of this year's Frankfurt Music Messe was Logic Audio. Emagic's slogan, 'we make computers groove', was aptly proved when the demonstrator transformed a straight-eight audio groove into a swing! Since then, the program has been eagerly awaited by Notator Logic users and direct-to-disk recording aficionados alike.

The combination of MIDI and audio recording in one totally integrated program is the ideal environment for a vast number of musicians working both at home and the studio. There are already several integrated MIDI and d-t-d programs produced by developers such as Steinberg, Opcode, and Mark of the Unicorn so, although the market is fairly new, there is already a trodden path Logic Audio has to follow. Let's see how it shapes up.

Setting up

The first step is to set up the hardware and load the software. Being Mac-based, this is all very easy, even though the files and procedures seem to have been updated since the manual was written. The program is protected by a dongle which plugs into the Mac's ADB socket. There are separate dongles for Logic and Logic Audio, and both must be installed for Audio to run.

We won't get too involved in the sequencing side of Logic Audio here (check out the side panel for the new features in Logic 2). If you're not familiar with the program's basic structure, a brief explanation will help you understand how it's organized.

Like many high-end sequencers. Logic is pattern-based. Individual music sections appear on the screen as oblong bars which can be dragged to any position on any track, which can in turn be assigned to any MIDI channel. You can cut, copy, and paste patterns, and most musicians find the system a very intuitive way of working. It certainly makes arranging a breeze.

One of Logic's most powerful features is the Environment page where virtual instruments - effectively those in your MIDI setup - can be linked together. But there's a lot more to it than that. You can plug virtual tools such as channel splitters, arpeggiators, delay units and so on into the MIDI system and create Mixers and other tools. Let's see how the audio side of Logic fits into all this.

Integrating audio

The first thing you notice is that audio tracks appear in the Arrange window alongside MIDI tracks. You can cut, copy and paste these, too, as you can MIDI tracks, but there are several differences.

The 'real' audio data is in a window called the Audio window which shows the audio files available for use in the song. You can record as many audio files as you wish and load previously-recorded audio files from disk. The program can read AIFF and SDII (Sound Designer II) files so there is plenty of scope for using samples and recordings from other programs. It identifies audio files by name, so you should not rename them through the Finder but from within Audio itself.

The program treats each audio track independently, so a stereo recording actually consists of two separate mono tracks. Some systems, such as Sound Designer II, use a single file for a stereo recording. Logic can read this but will create two mono files in addition to the stereo track. Something to bear in mind if disk space is short.

The chances are you won't want to use a complete audio file as it is, but sections of it. The program calls these regions, and you can create as many as you wish from a single audio file. In Logic parlance you might like to think of these as aliases. If you alter the original region, any occurrences of it will be changed in the Arrange window, too.

Anchors away

In the Audio window there's a triangle to the left of each audio file name which works like the View by Name function in System 7.1. Clicking on it will reveal a list of the regions the file contains.

An important element here is the Anchor, which is a reference point similar to Cubase's Q Points. They represent specific points in time within a region, and enable you to sync the recording to audio or visual cues if you are working with film. For example, if a region contained background music and a drum hit which you wanted to sync to an event, you would make the hit the Anchor and line it up with the event. When an audio line is moved, the Info line shows the Anchor position, not the sequencer beginning as it would if it were a MIDI sequence.

There are lots of region edit facilities to help you move it and its Anchor, show the waveform either side of it, and so on. A Strip Silence function will reduce all occurrences of audio data below a certain threshold to 0dB. It's not quite an automatic process, as there are lots of parameters to set but it is non-destructive. It can be used creatively to simulate a noise gate, to divide speech into words, or split a drum track into instruments (well, as near as the recording allows).

To add an audio region from the list you simply drag it from the Audio window into the Arrange window. It's as simple as that. From there it can be moved exactly like a MIDI sequence.

Recording

Recording is straightforward enough, simply a matter of selecting the Ins and Outs and checking the recording level. Overloading a digital input will certainly cause distortion, and there's a useful Clip function on the Input level meters which light and stay lit if the signal exceeds 0dB at any time during recording - just in case you miss it.

There are several different ways of recording. There's the usual way - press record, get a count in and start playing - and there are manual and automatic punch ins, too. You can make stereo recordings, even with the two-input Audiomedia II card. In fact, you can make several stereo recordings and then mix them together later on.

Selecting a track for audio recording is achieved in the Arrange window simply by assigning it to an audio track (or object as the program likes to call them) as opposed to a MIDI track. There are four preset audio objects and you can create your own.

Environment

The Environment window now has an Audio layer where you can set up and create objects to control the audio output. This runs through a set of EQ objects to a Pan control and then to faders.

Real-time mixing is possible on Logic Audio and, yes, you get to see the knobs turn during playback. Apart from being cute and much cheaper than an automated mixing desk, they confirm exactly what is happening to the audio signal.

The audio tracks are controlled via MIDI so you can use Hyper Edit - or any other editor, for that matter - to see and alter the pan and volume data. You can use Hyper Edit's Hyper Line to create a linear fade out, for example.

The EQ facilities are largely unsung in the manuals. Using EQ tools you can make changes to EQ settings on the fly, and record them in realtime. This is a major feature, and quite possibly one of the reasons why it's not heralded too much is because the whole thing is a natural part of the Environment.

Sample editing

The Sample Edit Window lets you edit the audio file directly. The information it displays can be highly customised to show the waveform amplitude in percentages or 16-bit values, and the ruler can display time in sample, SMPTE, minutes or bars. The zoom functions let you easily home in on specific sections of the file.

You can use the usual cut, copy and paste functions on the data although you are now engaging in destructive editing. Some options, however, are reversible through Undo.

There are several special edit functions here, including Normalise which boosts the signal to its loudest possible level, Change Gain which lets you alter the level by a specified amount, Fade In and Out, Silence, Invert (used to correct phase cancellations in mono mixes), Reverse and Trim.

The 'Digital Factory'

The latest release of Audio includes several new features created by the 'Digital Factory' which can be accessed from the Sample Editor.

The Time Machine is an audio timebase manipulator which allows time compression/expansion and pitch transposition. In other words, it can change the pitch of the sample without changing the length and vice versa.

A graph display shows the relationship between the two, and an Ideal line indicates the optimum changes. For example, if you double the length, the pitch will double, and this is the ideal. The graph shows how far away your changes are from the ideal. The program claims it can process variations in the range -10/+15% and still maintain extremely high audio quality.

The process is incredibly fast - on a Quadra 950 it takes little more than the length of the file being processed! It will even perform the transformation while playing, and you can hear the old version change to the new one! This is impressive stuff.

The Groove Machine lets you change the percentage of 'swing' in audio material. The manual calls the process Digital Re-Groove. You can, for example, take a straight-eight rock groove and turn it into a rock shuffle - as the demonstrator did at Frankfurt. And it works, too. More good stuff. However, the program uses the sequencer's tempo as a base to work from, so you must make sure the audio data is correctly aligned to bars before you start.

There is a function to help you match the tempo to the audio recording. This is also useful if you have an audio drum track that you want to loop. However, unlike MIDI tracks, audio recordings have a constant replay rate so you should make sure all the tempo information is in the song before you start audio recording.

The Audio to MIDI Groove template lets you create MIDI Groove templates from sampled audio so you can map MIDI data to the feel of the audio. Obvious, innit? There are lots of options here for selecting threshold levels and so on.

The Audio to Score Streamer will convert an audio sample into notation. This is something musicians have been screaming for for years. However, it's still in its very early stages. In its current state it does do a pretty good job of converting a clean monophonic line into notation. Anything else, however, is beyond its capabilities. I suspect that converting even a duophonic line successfully is some way off but we should appreciate the ingenuity of the programmer in getting this far.

You can also perform a digital mixdown of audio data from the Arrange page using the Glue tool. This is non-destructive and creates a new file on disk.

A final teaser is the Quantize Engine which has a menu entry but will not be available until the next update.

QuickTime

Another interesting feature is support for QuickTime movies. This is ably demonstrated, albeit in a very modest way, with one of the demo files.

It allows you to sync MIDI and audio data to the movie so you could use a video recorder to shoot a movie of your band, and create a QuickTime demo - watch out Mike Figgis! You do need a video capture card (unless you have an AV Mac) but, after d-t-d recording, it must surely be the next step along the musical ladder. Even if you don't have video capture equipment, there are lots of QuickTime movies freely available which you can hone your skills writing scores with.

Logic Audio also supports the Lexicon NuVerb, a digital effects processor on card which plugs into the Mac's NuBus slot.

One final aspect worth mentioning is Key Commands. These are key shortcuts, or hot keys, which let you control the program from the keyboard rather than with the mouse. There are key commands for virtually every function and if you don't like a particular key combination you can define your own. Real power user stuff.

Manual

Logic Audio is currently up to version 2.0. For some reason, Emagic didn't make much of the previous version and to many prospective buyers Version 2 is the program's first major release. However, not only do you get the original Audio manual, you also get a 48-page addendum plus a considerable Readme file on disk. And as Logic itself has been updated, you have three additional documents to contend with.

My favourite manual of all time was the Notator manual, with clip in pages which could be added to and replaced when an update was released. It's interesting to note that Steinberg has adopted this approach. It is far and away the best solution if a company does not wish to reprint an entire manual when it releases an update. The Logic addendum, I'm afraid, are in danger of becoming a liability.

When working with any software, there's always the danger of a conflict with some other part of your system. I have been using the original Logic program since its release, and it has always proved very stable. I'm pleased to say that Logic Audio showed no signs of falling over, in spite of being run with several other programs.

Logic itself is an extremely sophisticated sequencer, with a vast number of features and possibilities.

The essentials...

Price inc VAT: Logic (sequencer) - £349 Logic Audio module - £299

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