Logic Pro 11 is announced

[emasters]

Multiple CC lanes in the key editor would be nice -- I miss this from Cubase and don't expect Apple will enhance the current approach of one CC lane.

[isuckatproducing]

Day after buying Ableton 12 Suite, but I still feel good about switching DAWS.
Might use Logic for mixing/mastering.

Cool thing about Logic is the trial is a FULL version.

Don't understand the idea of using iPad for music production though, Imagine using "Files" app for things like file management....

[brd]

I'm impressed that it's a free update and they haven't moved to a subscription model.

[Trensharo]

Stem Separation
Chord Track
ChromaGlow
Studio Piano/Bass

Nice update.

I am curious what the Chord Track will be like, though... Will you be able to drag Chords to Instrument Tracks to add the MIDI there, and will there be a Circle of Fifths UI for choosing them, etc. Or is it just going to be there for the Bass and Keyboard to follow along to. Granted, we already have Scaler 2, so I guess it's not really a huge game changer, anyways, given relatively recent Scaler 2 updates and the fact that it runs as an AU MIDI FX in Logic Pro.

Nothing makes me laugh like screenshots of producers in a room with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with a MBP running Logic Pro and an Arturia Mini Lab, though...

ChromaGlow is a weird name. Could have named it ChromaFuzz and that probably would have given more of an indication of what it does... but maybe too close to Steinberg's QuadraFuzz, Lol.

ChromaGlow, when I initially saw the name, sounded more like a Revery or Shimmer Type plug-ins... or Something like Klevgrand's R0verb. Name just doesn't communicate anything about what the product actually does.

I agree with other posters (here and elsewhere)... I foresee many similar beats, baselines, etc. popping up on streaming services like Soundcloud, BandLab, etc.

I think the risk of this always existed in some DAWs (Reason's Chord Sequencer, Baseline Generator - anyone who uses Scaler 2 or Insta-Series MIDI Processors, EW's Orchestrator), but Logic Pro is a bit more ubiquitous than all of those across different music genres, and they're stock functions - not paid add-ons.

Especially if you can just take the MIDI from those Drummer/Piano/Bass performances and put them on other instrument tracks.

[Johnnyjohn]

not worth v11 imo, still looks like a 10.x with some additional sauce to market their M series even more

[elxsound]

I also wonder what the pricing is going to be? There were rumors of Apple switching to a subscription system.

Logic Pro has been hands down the most ridiculous value when it comes to DAWs. Free updates, massive ones at that, for over a decade now? Would be sad to see that end, because what a flex that is on Apple's part with all the free upgrades over the last decade.

I don't use Logic anymore, but I have to say that Logic served me VERY well for many years and I still can't believe it never costed me a dime after a certain point. The updates just kept coming for free.

From the OP's link:

Pricing and Availability

• Logic Pro for Mac 11 is available on May 13 as a free update for existing users and for £199.99 for new users on the Mac App Store. Logic Pro for Mac 11 requires macOS Ventura 13.5 or later. For more information, visit apple.com/uk/logic-pro.

• Logic Pro for iPad 2 is available on May 13 as a free update for existing users, and available on the App Store for £4.99per month or £49 per year, with a one-month free trial for new users. Logic Pro for iPad 2 requires iPadOS 17.4 or later. For more information, visit apple.com/uk/logic-pro-for-ipad.

Just adding on from their news release (with a badly used AI generated image): https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/ ... -features/

M-series Apple silicon is recommended when using Session Players on iPad.
M-series Apple silicon is required when using Stem Splitter on iPad and Mac.
M-series Apple silicon is recommended when using ChromaGlow on iPad. M-series Apple silicon is required when using ChromaGlow on Mac.

I’m also surprised that Ventura is the requirement. I still haven’t moved to Sonoma because my Intel machine can’t make the move, and of course some of those iLok/Sonoma issues took a while to fix.

Likewise, I don’t anticipate using the Stem Splitter option, but there could be uses beyond remixing, or using other people’s work. My brother uses freeware stem spitters when transcribing bass lines from jazz tracks.

I still haven’t tried using them before, so should be fun (on the M2 MacBook). Plus interesting to see they jumped to M4 already (supposedly due to slumping hardware sales over 2020-2022 demands).

[Trensharo]

On desktop there is a requirement because Intel Macs use Intel CPUs - and the spec packages can vary heavily in capabilities. On PCs, developers are more likely to leverage [newer] GPUs for AI/Neural Computational tasks - as SpectraLayers 10 Pro does on Windows - but you could have Intel Macs with nothing but an Intel iGPU or Low-End Radeon Processor.

Upper Mid-Range PC Laptops had already basically standardized on RTX #060 GPUs by 2019 or so, so that won't be a problem to other DAW developers who implement such features moving forwards. GPU is going to start mattering in music production.

Older iPads used iPhone SoCs that already had some of these components in those SoC, as they were leveraged in iPhones for things like Computational Photography, Voice Recognition/Transcription and Translation, etc. The only thing you lose there is Compute (CPU Core Count and Relative Core Performance) and RAM Capacity.

Final Cut Pro's new Time Remapping is going to require Apple Silicon for the same reason Resolve Studio's Speed Warp requires the GPU to process it (and runs fastest on Nvidia CUDA).

I'm most excited about the Final Cut Pro Time Remapping, because it's the only reason I was using Resolve Studio on my MBP... for Speed Warp. It is SOOOOO Good. If Logic Pro can be about 80% as good as Speed Warp, that would be good enough for me. That will allow me to move my second Resolve Activation to my PC Laptop; where it runs fantastic "because CUDA."

[Krakatau]

not worth v11 imo, still looks like a 10.x with some additional sauce to market their M series even more

...at the time the update it is a free update ?

[mdx4ever]

not worth v11 imo, still looks like a 10.x with some additional sauce to market their M series even more

...at the time the update it is a free update ?

…and therefore nothing to complain about…
How many developers have released free updates for their DAWs in past 15 years?
How many DAWS have so much to offer for $199 without upgrade fees?

[idontpost]

Yesterday I bought Serato Sample 2nd hand, because I wanted to have stemseperation integrated in my DAW - a few hours later Logic Pro 11 gets announced. lol... Now I can hopefully resell this sampler again.

[syntonica]

not worth v11 imo, still looks like a 10.x with some additional sauce to market their M series even more

...at the time the update it is a free update ?

…and therefore nothing to complain about…
How many developers have released free updates for their DAWs in past 15 years?
How many DAWS have so much to offer for $199 without upgrade fees?

You'll have to upgrade your dongle to an M1 or better, though...

[pdxindy]

You'll have to upgrade your dongle to an M1 or better, though...

I would have done that anyway. My Apple Silicon laptop is faster than my previous top of the line Intel one. Not just faster, but it is quiet and stays cool. It's freakin great!

[syntonica]

You'll have to upgrade your dongle to an M1 or better, though...

I would have done that anyway. My Apple Silicon laptop is faster than my previous top of the line Intel one. Not just faster, but it is quiet and stays cool. It's freakin great!

Yeah, my MBA M1 is almost 7 times faster than my old 2014 MacBook Pro--even in Rosetta mode. I use the MBA for business and music, but the 2014 is still my daily driver for everything else. It still works great for dev, writing, browsing, etc.

I'm completely uninterested in the new generative AI stuff. I'm already lazy enough with composing. What excites me is better pitch and formant correction, as well as track extraction (to be used on my own stuff, of course!) A ton of creativity will come from that.

And for gawd's sake, Apple, fix the GUI!

Anyway, I've just been crabby with chronic pain the last few days, so take my posts with a grain or two of salt.

[Trensharo]

not worth v11 imo, still looks like a 10.x with some additional sauce to market their M series even more

The version number literally means nothing. They release these updates for free, so the number is basically decoration at this point.

Scrutinizing the worth of a version upgrade only makes sense when you're being asked to pay an the price of a full version upgrade to access the new version.

[Trensharo]

You'll have to upgrade your dongle to an M1 or better, though...

I would have done that anyway. My Apple Silicon laptop is faster than my previous top of the line Intel one. Not just faster, but it is quiet and stays cool. It's freakin great!

Ehhh... Apple was using old CPUs so by the time Apple Silicon released they were already 1-2 generations behind Intel, and AMD quickly had Ryzen APUs (5000-series) that were practically on par with M1 SoCs (and better in multi-threaded workloads). And the GPUs in those machines were definitely better than the GPU and Neural Engine in M1 machines for these tasks (particularly those from Nvidia).

The dongle argument is pretty trollish when delivered with that verbiage, but it's a fairly valid argument. $2K (14" MBP with M# Pro + Storage Upgrade) to upgrade a machine to use software features which could have easily been implemented with a CPU-bound fall back would be a lot to ask of me. Macs are going to be, increasingly, treated like iPhones in the way that Apple artificially limits functions to egg people on to upgrade.

This will start to happen to M-series soon. Within the next year or two, we will see them limit features to newer and newer M-series chips to get even those people to upgrade. The CPU is always the most powerful we've ever seen, until they tell you it's not powerful enough to run a feature in an OS or software upgrade

Those M1 machines are safe for now, though.

Software like SpectraLayers Pro 10 are already utilizing GPUs for things like Stem Separation, etc. The only difference on PC is that you have generally a CPU-bound fallback. I reckon we will see more of that popping up. I'm surprised Steinberg is one of the developers early to leverage this... They aren't known for their agility.

DaVinci Resolve is already using its Neural Engine to do a lot of things with Audio (like Voice Isolation, Transcription, etc.). They were REALLY early with that. I think Adobe was fairly close behind, though Resolve's Speed Warp ReTiming was like 2 years+ earlier than Apple's implementation (coming in the next revision of Final Cut Pro). Their software development seems to be lagging their hardware by a decent clip, while other vendors tend to be more on top of these things while delivering the same solutions to different platforms, architectures and CPU/GPU vendors.

I think AI will start to get really interesting when it comes to tools like [Dynamic] EQs, MultiBand Compressors, etc. Well, "better AI" (feels fraudulent to call it "AI") ... compared to stuff like iZotope Assistants. Some of what iZotope does is nice, but it isn't very smart about it.

I think This Technology is going to start really cutting into the skill gap, and decreasing it. That's going to hurt a lot of people's business.

I don't think AI Session players are really much of a threat to anyone, frankly. We've been able to generate melodies, etc. with other plug-ins for years. I think it will become threatening when it starts to etch into the engineering skill gap and provide great results there.