Hello together,

I wanted to more than just vent some frustration here, rather sum up my overall experience moving from a totally stable Intel Logic Pro 7 system with many plugins and a FireWire interface to a frustratingly semi-buggy Mac M1 Logic Pro X 10 system with again many plugins and a RME USB interface.

I would grade myself as semi-pro and have been doing computer music since before the Atari 1040 for over 35 years and hard disk recording for over 30 years.

I would very much appreciate feedback from pros and semi-pros with a decade or more of experience who work with many tracks, many plugins, and do loads of comping, mixing and some mastering perhaps, all primarily under Logic.

Preemptively, this is not about needing to have xx percent more single core power by moving to a Pro / Max, or about having the wrong workflow, I'm fine there, thanks.

TLDR, in my opinion, Apple has become a frustratingly arrogant company, mostly detached from the actual pro user, caught somewhere between wokeness and the bling bling of buzzwords like artificial intelligence. Their user forums are a joke and reflect their attitude. In short, they just don't care anymore, and, yes, this was different under Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, Mr Lengeling from ex-Emagic seems too little involved in the nitty gritty these days, even though I can't fault anyone for enjoying the California sunshine.

My gripes:
- CPU core load balancing. Never been a problem on my old system. If plugins were distributed unevenly among cores, a quick stop and restart of the song was enough to fix this. Now, plugins specifically on the main bus use more processing power than on other busses, and can lead to the crazy situation where one core is at 90 percent, while others are below 20. Emagic had this figured out decades ago.

- Sometimes, when trying to save, both 'Save' and 'Save as' are greyed out. This has been described elsewhere.

- Solo via key command is not logical anymore and makes the use of a second key command necessary to clear all soloed tracks.

- Always two clunky faders / channel strips on the left side, or none at all

- When shrinking the vertical size of the track view, the little VU meters disappear and are replaced by dots.

- Huge inspector float window

- Workflow with separate windows is illogical and again clunky, because additional piano roll and mixer windows cannot be made small enough. I have a 1440 QHD monitor, so it's just about bearable.

- Mute track has been replaced by mute instrument by default and must first be changed in the track header, by those who know it.

- When gliding over the plugin fields in the mixer window with the mouse pointer, the fields change colour to reflect they can be selected, but then sometimes do not change colour back.

- The dozens of graphical guitar amps are an unprofessional joke when all you are looking for is a specific sound.

- Many of the old plugins have simply been reskinned, often to their detriment. Most stuff available on Logic was there 15 years ago, plus the sample player, which actually was free in a limited version before.

- The new system should easily be at least four times as powerful as my old system. In reality, I could run just as many plugins at the same buffer size ten years ago. The developers have become extremely lazy at writing good, efficient code.

- Many other things I will add when I remember them.

The only real advantages I see are being able to use a few newer plugins, though most like Fab Filter and many others were available for my old system in just the same way. And the very fast internal NVME drive of course, but this has nothing to do with Logic or even Apple itself, and simply reflects how hardware has changed. I use external SSDs for projects and backup.

I would be curious about other peoples' experiences here. I am not really interested in the logic of 'things change, live with it', because this here is about regression, missing beta testing and not listening to the relevant user feedback.

Everything up till about some years ago seemed like an improvement regarding sound and workflow. This here, not so much.

I've been doing music since before the Atari, and Logic has been my daily driver since V1 (Creator/Notator before that on the ST, and hardware sequencers etc before that). Oh, and I'm a mod on a popular Logic forum too (I used to contribute heavily on the Apple ones for years, but left as it became a bit more entry-level/noobish and less interesting for me to spend time there), so I see, and help with a lot of people's issues and struggles to get to know Logic, and have done for decades.

So I know where most of the bodies are buried.

I'm not going to go point by point on your post as this would take more time than I have right now, and I don't find venting particularly productive - there's a bunch of stuff that that is simply down to unfamiliarity with some of the concepts or the reasons why things are implemented which could be explained in a few sentences (like the dual channel strip layout in the inspector), and some stuff that seems to be misbehaving on your system that I've never seen, like unavailable save menus and things. All those things can be troubleshooted if you want to go in that direction.

Some things you mention are intentional, ie if you resize the tracks so they aren't big enough to display the various controls, those get hidden, or replaced with smaller versions that are. There are many ways of working with editor windows if you're feeling cramped on a small monitor.

And yes, almost all the old plugins are still there for project compatibility reasons, with many newer ones added intended to replace some of the older ones. Others are still just as good as they always were, and some are just as bad as they always were and are best avoided. You're not going to find alternatives for *all* the best third-party plugins coming with a DAW. I don't particularly get on with the amp sims either - go third-party and find something you prefer. How are the amp sims that come with Cubase/Reaper/StudioOne/Ableton for comparison?

And no, the EXS24 (Sampler) was never free, it was a paid optional extra until Logic Pro 6.4 where Apple bundled *all* the paid plugins into Logic for free. There was briefly an EXS24P VST version - that was a paid product too. Sampler had a massive reworking in 10.5 with a lot of tools coming over from Redmatica's (excellent) Keymap Pro, and also they added QuickSampler too.

I'm running LP11 on my M1 MBP under Sonoma and without a doubt it's the best computer and Logic experience I've ever had. (That's not to say there aren't a lot of bugs with Logic, LP11.0.0 especially has some clunkers but hopefully the big ones will get addressed over the next minor update or two).

There are other things where you're probably used to using old habits or workflows for which there are different or better alternatives now, and you just haven't learned those yet, or adapted those habits. Eg, double-clicking opens a region in the editor, so if you want to convert an alias to a real copy, use the appropriate key command instead of double-clicking.

(Again, I'm just generalising from your comments about stuff I recognise, so please don't take that personally.)

Your comments about mute are a case in point - you probably didn't realise that Logic *always* had the dual mute behaviour (well, since LP4.x or 5.x at least) with different pros/cons/behaviours, which had to be toggled in the prefs and were somewhat obtuse - these are now broken out into two different mute type buttons, the mixer/channel mute (fast, non-CPU saving and glitchless) and the track power switch (slower, CPU-saving), so the user can best configure the behaviours they want - this offers all the old behaviour, but in a more accessible and direct interface. But yes, conceptually, if you don't understand those concepts, it can be weird compared to other DAWs that implement somewhat simpler functionality. Same as many fundamental concepts in Logic that a lot of people don't get (I won't start listing them here! )

Apple silicon is more efficient at lower buffer sizes than Intel - don't use the old habits of whacking up the buffer sizes to cope with plugin loads, you can stick to low buffers for the most part. I'm at 32 all the time now, whereas I used to be at 128 generally, and crank it up as the mix got bigger. Again, this is largely adapting old habits to the new environment, where things are different.

Gerhard - and pretty much most of the original team are still plenty involved with Logic, btw.

So, if you have some specific questions you like to get some input on, I'm happy to address/explain/troubleshoot some, but many of them you'll resolve as you become more familiar with the software and the many changes made since you used the older versions, and some I'm sure you'll come to really like once you get used to them...

And yes, I could have done without the automatic session players too in LP11 and some development focus elsewhere, but Apple don't just design Logic for me (alas..! - although I did get some stuff put in there for me along the way.)

Note - I've used every major version of Logic (except Logic 3, I was stuck on Logic Atari 2.5 at that point), and I have to go to LP7.x quite a bit (and sometimes even earlier) as I convert old projects for people - trust me, LP now is better than it's even been (at least, imo), even if you don't like some of their design/interface/workflow changes along the way.

Hi, thanks for your answer.

A buffer size of 32 is simply not possible with my current project, 64 is, meaning 4,1ms RTL instead of 2,6, which is still okayish. I have a few demanding plugins in there, but nothing out of the ordinary. R2, Tube, Pro MB, Imager, L2, Elephant. The load balancing is a nightmare and makes the system a total regression from my old one.

I meant the Alchemy sample player, not the ESX24 sampler. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

What is the point of two channel strips? Why not the ability to choose?

I have had the no save possible error two times now. Other people have had it, too. It exists.

I got the mute problem fixed for me, but it was not intuitive.

Solo is not logical for me, I want to deselect all solos with the same key.

I realise elements get hidden when track views are compressed, but that doesn't make it good. The VU bar could easily be preserved for longer.

Why can't separate windows be scaled more?

I agree about the convert alias to real part key command making more sense, but double clicking always was faster.

When gliding over the plugin fields in the mixer window with the mouse pointer, the fields change colour to reflect they can be selected, but then sometimes do not change colour back. Really annoying, happens to me the whole time, perhaps because my workflow is faster than anticipated.

And the float inspector is far too big.

Just remembered: Count-in for record is always a whole bar, even if 2/4 is selected, but then no cycle used. No workaround found. Never was this way before.

There is just too much flaky here, and I have also been producing forever. My first DAW was Notator, then Cubase, later Logic and ever since.

My impression is that the people at Emagic, now Apple, are not serious producers, but probably do a bit of EDM. But I remember meeting Lengeling at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt, decades ago. Nice guy.

Sure, these things are always a user/project/case dependent. I've just seen a lot of people crank up to 1024 buffers like we used to in the LP7 days and it's just not necessary, nor do you gain anything by it - but it sounds like that's not in your case anyway...

Compared to LP7, when you were saying load balancing was great, we are all running *way* more plugins, more CPU-hungry plugins, and more tracks and busses than we were back in 2004/5 when LP7 was out. So I don't think it was better then, we were just less demanding, generally.

Not to mention now we have different types of cores to allocate processing to, e-cores and p-cores and there are complexities of how they work too. (It seems there room for improvement in allocating work to e-cores. Are you on a low end M1 that has more e-cores and less p-cores? Performance will be quite a bit lower than machines that have more p-cores, as it's those that handle the bulk of the work in Logic. If you're not aware, you can tune the cores that Logic uses in the audio prefs - by default, it won't use the e-cores, you have to expressly tell it to.

The key thing to understand is most DAWs process one channel on one core for performance optimisation reasons, and if you are running heavy plugin chains, you can exhaust what a single-core can process in realtime. The way (since LP7 days) of handling this hasn't changed - you split up processing across multiple channels so they can be allocated around more easily.

Live mode, where a track is selected puts everything onto one core for high-priority and low-latency reasons, and this includes busses a track feeds into and even the output track - again, with high/demanding plugin counts, you can peg a core. There are tools and workflows for these things too.

Do you have some specific cases where you can demonstrate or explain a load-balancing "nightmare"? Is it that you are overloading a core? Or that your CPU meters are evenly distributed? Or something else?

Or are you just very demanding the processing ability of your M1? I have an M1 Pro, and honestly, it's all the power I need for any kind of project I do - and that's usually using quite a lot of virtual instruments....

Before being bundled into Logic, Alchemy was an existing product. There was a cut-down player only version of Alchemy when it was a third-party product (before it had been added to Logic), which allowed you to access presets, tweak the performance pads, and buy and use sound libraries, but not do any sound editing. All this was pre-Apple buying Camel Audio, and Apple bundled the full, improved (it was actually the unreleased V2 Alchemy) in Logic.

Alchemy on it's own cost about the same as what Logic cost, before Apple added it to Logic for free and continued development.

So if your point was that Alchemy existed before it was added to Logic, yes, it did, and it was highly regarded, and a lot of PC Alchemy users were pissed at Apple for killing it for them.

It's for convenience, so you can access both the channel strip of the selected track, and whatever channel strip that channel feeds into, so you can either show the channel strip the selected track's channel strip outputs to, or a bus it feeds (eg, shift-click a bus sendon the selected channel strip to show/access that bus channel), so you can easily get to those things that affect the current signal flow without having to open up the mixer. In short, you get both the source, and other related signal flow channels right there in the inspector.

Perhaps you misunderstood me - I wasn't saying it doesn't exist, I was saying I haven't experienced it, or heard anything about it, just from what you describe. You might actually be describing a different issue though, which is more than just those two things being disabled, which I do know about, and is indeed a weird bug where Logic gets into some weird state for some unknown reason.

Indeed - these things are usually because of not understanding the underlying concepts. Once you do, it makes more sense, and once you know, you know.

"Intuitive" only goes so far. I started learning Blender. It is *not* even remotely intuitive. It takes a learning effort to get to know it and use it effectively. Most pro software is not that different, to varying degrees.

I'm not really sure which solos or key commands you are using. If I'm not using a hardware control surface, then clicking the S button will solo/unsolo a channel, option-clicking the S button will unsolo all solo'd channels. Unsoloing the selected channel, and unsoloing *all* channels, are two different functions, so I'm not sure it would make sense to have a key command that soloed a selected channel, and unsolos all channels as a toggle.

If you're saying LP7 used to work like this, which commands are you referring to, specifically? I can check.

Sure, many things could be designed differently, and different design choices made across the board. If you have strong suggestions, use the Apple feedback form to make your suggestions.

Are you running on a tiny/constrained monitor? Because if you pop the region inspector out to a float, it's not exactly huge on a typical monitor (in the screenshot attached I'm running at 2560x1440, which is pretty standard.) The inspector version can be resized horizontally smaller than the float, but I'm guessing you're floating it because you're window constrained..?

Yes, it would be better if the float version could be horizontally shrunk to the same degree the regular inspector can if you're running on a small monitor - again, send some feedback to Apple about changes that are affecting your workflow. No guarantees it will be addressed, but it certainly won't if you don't ask...

Yeah I loved Creator/Notator and used it to death until I moved to Logic 1.x. I always despised Cubase though (and Pro24).

Notator wasn't a DAW BTW*, it was a sequencer.

* Well, it was *almost* a DAW :-
http://www.muzines.co.uk/blog/notator-hd/32

There's nothing wrong with staying on LP7. The DAW is just a tool. Why not go back?

When people say things like this I wonder what planet they are living on. I know that sounds harsh. But my M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM is the absolute bare minimum of what I would consider acceptable performance in 2024. And I still need to be very conservative with my synth plugin polyphony settings and typically need to turn off the built-in FX and use FX sends (and certainly not inserts) to further conserve processing power.

And I use my 14 hardware synths to further reduce the load!

I have been waiting FOREVER for Apple to release the M4 Mac Studio Ultra. That just might be able to handle the kinds of projects I work on where I often play 4-note chords using layered sounds. That kind of polyphony chews through CPU power. If PCs weren't so unstable and noisey (in my experience at least,) I would probably build a water-cooled Intel i9 149000K tower and be done with it. Of course, I'd have to use Cubase or Studio One in that case. But it might just be worth it to get the performance I need at a price that doesn't break the bank.

Eh, that sounds somewhat dismissive.

My needs are (clearly) not the same as yours...

I'm sorry but I just get tired of people (not you) saying silly things like "an M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM is all you need for music production." That is so misleading and flat out untrue for the VAST majority of musicians.

If someone is using plugins exclusively (and doesn't have a Vienna Ensemble PC to reduce the load,) they are probably going to need an M4 Mac Studio Ultra unless they are prepared to bounce tracks all day long.

While generalisations can indeed be problematic, it sounds like you're judging everybody else by your needs. There are plenty of musicians that record guitars and bands, with minimal track counts. There are people that make music by assembling audio loops. There are plenty of people who don't need 50 synths in their track. There are people that manage their resources, print to audio, and don't need to run everything in real time. There are people who don't need 300 FX plugins in their projects, or 200 tracks. And there are people doing hybrid movie scores that need all the resources they can get their hands on.

There are many paths to creativity.

That sounds just as silly a generalisation as "an M1 MacBook Air with 8TB of RAM is all you need for music production". *Many* pieces of music were made with way less resources than you apparently need for your projects.

I'm pretty much using plugins exclusively these days, and I can categorically say I don't need an M4 Mac Studio Ultra. My needs are different to yours, I don't think that's a difficult concept to grasp.

Out of curiosity, on your 64GB MBP - when you're running a typical project of yours, what's your RAM pressure? (Green, yellow or red will suffice.)

It's almost always green when I'm running mostly synth plugins. But I do add a number of orchestral parts to my Pop songs. (I'm a huge Beatles fan.) In that case, the RAM pressure can occasionally go into the yellow. I do try to manage it, however, and rarely keep my entire orchestral template in memory after I've written the orchestral parts.

Back when I had a 2015 15" i7 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM I used a custom built 8-core i7 Vienna Ensemble PC with 64GB of RAM for my orchestral parts. But I haven't felt the need to use that since getting my M1 Max MacBook Pro. Because the PC isn't water cooled, it runs incredibly hot and loud to the point where it's almost unbearable. Thank goodness for Apple Silicon.

Genuine question: why not bouncing some of the VIs in order to free some resources? I work with a M1 Pro macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM and, although never ran into CPU or memory problems, I do manage my resources as good practice. Really, do you need dozens of VIs running at the same time? Why not committing to some of the stuff you record? I too do some scoring every now and then, but I always commit, I can’t stand more than two live midi tracks on my sessions, I can only work comfortably with audio tracks for editing reasons.

Besides, an insight for you. I used to run long chains of plugins on every single channel, hundreds of plugins per session. Two years ago I started investing in hardware, nothing fancy, it’s an ongoing project. But I’m using it on the most important stuff (the real time bounce in place in LP11 is a huge time saver) and now I barely use plugins on most channels. There’s nothing like passing an acoustic guitar, bass or vocal through a nice colorful pre amp, analog EQ and compressor. The song almost mix itself effortlessly, everything sits nicely AND sounds way clearer than said long chain of plugins.

Now I need less resources from my machine, rarely spend money buying plugins and get to enjoy the real stuff. It’s been an eye opener. My 2c.

I personally don't like to bounce tracks to audio because I often edit parts right up until I mix the song. Even though I took piano lessons (and studied music theory) in college, I'm far from the world's best keyboard player. So I will often tweak the velocities and durations of notes here and there to tighten up my playing. That's of course lazy of me. If I just practiced piano more frequently and rehearsed my parts before recording them, I wouldn't need to spend time editing the MIDI data. But I'm also a perfectionist and will continue to tweak notes right up until I mix the song even if most people probably can't tell that I've made any changes.

I will also tweak my synth patches right up until I mix the song to better tailor the sounds to the song parts. Sometime I'll even change the plugin or hardware synth that I'm using for a given part at the last minute.

I'm also an old school "MIDI Guy" and don't really like working with audio (except when recording vocals and acoustic instruments of course). I just hate freezing and unfreezing tracks. That drives me crazy. I want a computer where I can run everything "live" and not ever have to worry about polyphony settings or turning off synth plugin effects (assuming they sound good).

I think an M4 Mac Studio Ultra will probably be as close to a "no compromises" computer as I will get for a while. It will of course cost a small fortune if I get it with 128GB of RAM and 8TB of storage. But for me it will be worth it.

I have a few machines running Logic - some nearly 30 years old, others newer. One thing IS true: the times when Apple were a functional company that cared are over since maybe 20 years. I could record a band with an old G3 laptop from '98 or with a modern machine. I don't care.
Don't expect anything from Apple except marketing blah and occasional breadcrumbs. Don't take that company for what it has been long ago. It's the emperors new clothes for a long time. It has been co-opted like Windows or most other things and been taken over as a poli_tical tool.
Do not expect what is not there anymore. Either use the new software or the old software but do not expect mercy or help or anything from them.

This is why this forum can sometimes be so cool. We're literally on opposite sides of the spectrum midi/audio tracks wise, ha! That's very funny!

Yeah, if I were on your shoes I'd wait for the M4 ultra. That beast will probably be worth every penny for you. Me, personally, will upgrade to an M4 Pro/Max depending on the benchmarks for audio, as the M1 Pro still has some decent resale value where I live. As I said, because I bounce everything and use hardware a lot, don't need a lot of plugins anymore.

Bouncing tracks, in 2024? I wonder if these macs are really for video. Audio doesn't seem much more efficient than a 2013 imac

What’s the problem with bouncing midi tracks? I hate dealing with midi, I bounce everything to audio as soon as I’m done recording any midi parts. It’s nothing to do with the computer, it’s about how I prefer to work. Cheers.

of course, I mean it's so strange how people talk about the incredible speed of silicon etc, yet there are all these bottlenecks

No computer in the world is bottleneck free for audio. Some plugins are very CPU intensive and a chain in the masterbus is all one needs to bring any CPU to a halt. The new M4 series are the fastest consumer CPUs right now available and even they cannot run an infinite long chain of very intensive plugins on a single channel. Audio processing needs to run in real time, there’s no way around this. So, it’s always been about making smart decisions when mixing. I for one run everything through my hardware chain these days and bounce everything (because I don’t have infinite hardware available) and use very few plugins, so an M1 Pro is more than enough.

I think the key thing here is, the Apple Silicon CPUs are significantly faster, less power hungry (read less heat, less fan noise, and longer battery life for the MacBooks) and more stable than the old intel CPUs.

What's not to like?

Small point.

I have a band new 16” MBP M4 Max - it runs silently.

I have a pro built 13900K desktop with water cooled AIO loop - it runs silently.

MBP runs Logic 11 and Cubase 14 (writing room)

13900K runs Cubase Pro 14 (main studio)

Logic 11 and Garage Band run like a dream on the M4 Max MBP. Cubase Pro 14 run okay-ish on the MBP …. on PC Cubase runs considerably better.

For me, Logic 11 (Garage Band on steroids) is just brilliant for songwriting and sketching out ideas - Apple have made it such an inspiring DAW for creativity - even the guitar pedalboard is fab!

In the studio for recording, editing and mixing I personally prefer Cubase Pro 14.

I feel very fortunate to have both platforms as I think they have very different strengths.

If I only needed Logic 11 then I’d have my eye on the forthcoming Studio M4 Ultra that’s going to fly with Logic 11.

Logic low latency performance is second to none - Apple have most definitely got that sorted.

Though of course the weak point on all CPU’s be it ARM, Intel or AS is their lacklustre single core performance which is only about 2.5x what it was 10 years ago!

It seems they can only vibrate those tiny transistors to a point before they melt.

Sure we have dozens of cores now and memory bandwidth approaching the speed of light - but that’s processing width not height.

I’ve basically switched to Cubase. I’ve been a logic user since nine. There are just so many little bugs that pop up and I don’t trust it for professional work. It’s things like trying to move markers and rename them, and they keep resetting themselves and remaining blank.
These are not some of the intentional behaviors that have been mentioned in other threads.
I never have any problem with Cubase whatsoever. Logic has become the DAW that pours in features and bells and whistles, but neglect, basic stability and efficiency. I feel that Cubase listened to their users because 14 is absolutely stunning in terms of snappiness and performance.
It baffles me that the people that make the hardware have the DAW that runs sometimes the worst on their system.

Cubase 14 Pro, Wavelab 12 and Dorico 5 are my production suite in my studio - Cubase is superb for tracking (audio and VI’s) editing and mixing.

But I my writing room I have just returned after a near 20 year gap to Logic for my writing sketch pad.

I think Logic lends itself to the initial creative impulse perfectly - it’s so fast for rapid creativity.

So now I write in Logic and produce in Cubase.

Best of both worlds.

Funny you mentioned this- I am arriving at this same workflow! I love the arranger track in Cubase and I can't live without mixer snapshots- but Logic is great to get into the flow quickly.