Apple have released a free update to their flagship DAW, Logic Pro X. Their latest revision, Logic Pro 10.3, adds a series of useful tools that have been oft-requested by die-hard users for years. These include:
- Selection-based processing: Finally, Logic now allows users to process clips separately within the same audio track.
- Track Alternatives: Create and switch between different playlists of regions and edits on a track.
- True stereo panning: Until now, moving the pan pot left and right with a stereo audio clip would change the level of left and right channels. True stereo panning required you to break out the Direction Mixer plug-in. This is now no more. Hurrah!
- Apply fades across multiple regions at a time: This feature may seem small but will save stacks of time.
The 10.3 update also upgrades the summing engine to 64-bit, and adds loads more busses for a total of 192 — more than enough for any parallel processing, routing and grouping you might want to do.
For those who are constantly side-chaining compressors, there’s also now the ability to select a Software instrument as a sidechain source instead of having to create a send, and using the relevant bus as the source. MIDI Plug-ins also get beefed up, with the ability to creatively control plug-in parameters — this could have very interesting consequences for electronic musicians.
In addition to all this, the GUI has had an overhaul, making it lighter and flatter. There is also some pretty serious integration with the Touch Bar on Macbook Pro. Smart Controls can be summoned, as can customisable key commands, as well as a musical keyboard and drum trigger pads with velocity and note repeat functions.
Finally, a new feature called Share to GarageBand allows you to take advantage of the touch interface and portability of iOS devices. Add new tracks to your Logic project from your iPhone or iPad via Apple’s iCloud service.
