Apple launches Logic Pro on iPad (yes, really)

stickyfiddle

menamestom said:

I know quite a few people that record loads on Garage Band on Ipads. Makes sense for those if they want to develop projects and are more than happy with the ipad workflow. A very reasonable price for a much more powerful tool. Wouldn't be surprised if they put it in as an option with one of their bundles like Apple One.

Yeah - this seems reasonable. It's not going to be option 1 for pros in big studios who have Mac Pros and endless outboard kit. But for amateurs and young folks who already have an ipad and a couple of mics it'll be a step up

hollywoodrox

Audiokit have just launched the FREE “King of FM”  synth too . Their previous FM player 2 & FM Player  is top drawer  it’s hard to understand how they could have improved it but apparently they have . 

menamestom

stickyfiddle said:

menamestom said:

I know quite a few people that record loads on Garage Band on Ipads. Makes sense for those if they want to develop projects and are more than happy with the ipad workflow. A very reasonable price for a much more powerful tool. Wouldn't be surprised if they put it in as an option with one of their bundles like Apple One.

Yeah - this seems reasonable. It's not going to be option 1 for pros in big studios who have Mac Pros and endless outboard kit. But for amateurs and young folks who already have an ipad and a couple of mics it'll be a step up

Yes, I can't Imagine pro studios doing everything from anI ipad or taking work home on an Ipad out of hours.  It might not even work that way, i.e. it might be a one way street.

Plus there's no reason with the functionality it will have, people can't produce pro quality results, many people release stuff they have recorded themselves nowadays and this opens things up a little more.  You don't have to go and buy a £1500 Macbook, or a PC with loads of software. You may be able to use the ipad you already have, but without the limitations and frustrations of Garageband.

One issue I can see is storage, if the basic install and virtual instruments takes up too much space, it's a moot point anyway.  Not many people will rush out to but 1tb ipad pro's when you could just buy a Mac.   

I've cleared space on my ipad Air in anticipation.  I have 30gb free. I'm currently finishing an album on PC/Cubase, when it's done I'd quite like to try something more ambitions on the ipad just to change the workflow for a bit and see how that changes what I record. 

menamestom

Had a quick play today, feels better than Garageband and pretty intuitive.  

goldtop

TBH, if Apple added a few basic things to iOS Garageband (MIDI out, normalisation of audio, etc), it'd suit a lot of home musicians.

stickyfiddle

goldtop said:

TBH, if Apple added a few basic things to iOS Garageband (MIDI out, normalisation of audio, etc), it'd suit a lot of home musicians.

But then nobody would subscribe to Logic... 

goldtop

^ Yup - to get even mid-level features, you have to cough up a pro-level price. I understand Apple's tactics, but mid-level hobbyists end up looking elsewhere - Cubasis, BM3, etc. (Or Reaper/etc for Mac users.)

Anyhoo, here's an interesting comparison of how it performs on 4 levels of iPad. Up to 80 tracks on every model that can run it:



From the differences between the two benchmarks, it would seem that Apple has done well on optimising Logic's own plugins.

dindude

GarageBand always seems really toy like to me, a music tool for non musicians - I might try the Logic free period, I watched a YouTube intro the other day, very few around at the time, and the guy had it sat upright on his iPad keyboard the whole time and complained of the lack of shortcut keys! Facepalm!

Anyway, some things looked good, others looked a bit clunky to be honest. I’ve lost a bit of faith in Apples ability to make things as simple as they once did, has anyone tried to set an alarm on an iPhone recently, Jesus, wouldn’t like to be in the mind of whoever designed that car crash.

Anyway, people seem to ignore Cubasis, been round for years and is a fantastic iPad DAW, for me it gets a great balance between ease of use and features that don’t feel at all limiting. 

menamestom

goldtop said:

TBH, if Apple added a few basic things to iOS Garageband (MIDI out, normalisation of audio, etc), it'd suit a lot of home musicians.

Not just home musicians, but for live / field recordings also.  I used GB the other day to record 8 live tracks from my Zoom Livetrack 12.  Worked fine, except for the frustration of setting up 8 tracks manually rather than as one operation.

I'll try the same with logic next time I'm in the studio.   But first impression was Logic adds the functionality GB misses, which is good, but it does feel a bit like an unlocked GB rather than something completely new.  That said, I've only scratched the surface.

goldtop

Seems there's still some usability issues to address. It seems that Logic cannot be made full-screen on an external monitor:



Not my setup - someone posted this on reddit. I am not bothering with an external monitor for the moment, as I'm pretty sure I'll be trying to press on the screen to move dials and zoom in/out.  

Danny1969

dindude said:

GarageBand always seems really toy like to me, a music tool for non musicians - I might try the Logic free period, I watched a YouTube intro the other day, very few around at the time, and the guy had it sat upright on his iPad keyboard the whole time and complained of the lack of shortcut keys! Facepalm!

Anyway, some things looked good, others looked a bit clunky to be honest. I’ve lost a bit of faith in Apples ability to make things as simple as they once did, has anyone tried to set an alarm on an iPhone recently, Jesus, wouldn’t like to be in the mind of whoever designed that car crash.

Anyway, people seem to ignore Cubasis, been round for years and is a fantastic iPad DAW, for me it gets a great balance between ease of use and features that don’t feel at all limiting. 

Hold sleep  / wake button and say "set my alarm for 7:30am" 

That's it. 

dindude

I've been trialling Logic Pro IOS for the last few days, my initial impressions.

The Good:
It looks stunning, the way the track meters fade when you stop a track is almost worth £5 a month alone!
It's not short on features that's for sure.
The sound library is very comprehensive and pro sounding, as are the fx.
The way it handles plugs ins is pretty elegant.
The ability and the freedom to create busses is nice.

The Frustrations;
Many more windows that need to be opened and closed (I'm comparing this mainly to Cubasis) which makes it feels very cramped at times.
Also much more scrolling up and down as less that just fits onto the iPad screen real estate.
The learning curve - you can be up and running pretty quickly  but I find myself scratcjing my head on some fairly basic stuff which requires either experimentation or a tutorial, in which case 30 mins have disappeared - the investment required to get the best out of it may be the downfall for me.
My biggest issue is not really with the app but with DAWs in general and the reason I went to ipad from Mac. The way it's set out just lends itself to sound library menu driving rather than sound creation. The sounds are very produced and very pro, so you find yourself putting together something pretty quickly that sounds really good on the face of it, but it's not necessarily good creative music. The sounds just remind me of every song on Radio 1, which sound like they're entirely done "in the box" aside from a few heavily processed vocal tracks layered on top. So for all the million options, it aids the homogonisation of music. Has me itching to add guitar and analog synths just to break it up.

But then I'm strange, I love Korg Gadget on ipad, when I discovered this I was more prolific and  creative than at any point in the last 6 years, as it forces you to sound design from the off with virtual instruments. Problem is the fx are only good enough for sketching ideas.

So in short, I'll probably invest a little more time as I really like the mixing environment. Probably still do a lot of sequencing and track building in  Gadget and the move to Logic for audio tracks, fx, mixing, and some layering.

Apologies for the long rant on DAWs but I judge these things ultimately on how much good music I create as a result of the technology.

darthed1981

I find iOS stuff rather over-priced and trendy, and find you can usually get something that's more PC shaped for a third of the price...

That said sultry youtube songstress and apple shill Mary Spender can't shut up about this logic on an ipad thing...

dindude

Danny1969 said:

dindude said:

GarageBand always seems really toy like to me, a music tool for non musicians - I might try the Logic free period, I watched a YouTube intro the other day, very few around at the time, and the guy had it sat upright on his iPad keyboard the whole time and complained of the lack of shortcut keys! Facepalm!

Anyway, some things looked good, others looked a bit clunky to be honest. I’ve lost a bit of faith in Apples ability to make things as simple as they once did, has anyone tried to set an alarm on an iPhone recently, Jesus, wouldn’t like to be in the mind of whoever designed that car crash.

Anyway, people seem to ignore Cubasis, been round for years and is a fantastic iPad DAW, for me it gets a great balance between ease of use and features that don’t feel at all limiting. 

Hold sleep  / wake button and say "set my alarm for 7:30am" 

That's it. 

No one like a clever clogs

Funny enough, I got around to a IOS system update today that has been queuing up for weeks (months?) and the alarm is back in the Clock app and not just in Health, so I couldn’t have been the only one. 

stickyfiddle

dindude said:

Danny1969 said:

dindude said:

GarageBand always seems really toy like to me, a music tool for non musicians - I might try the Logic free period, I watched a YouTube intro the other day, very few around at the time, and the guy had it sat upright on his iPad keyboard the whole time and complained of the lack of shortcut keys! Facepalm!

Anyway, some things looked good, others looked a bit clunky to be honest. I’ve lost a bit of faith in Apples ability to make things as simple as they once did, has anyone tried to set an alarm on an iPhone recently, Jesus, wouldn’t like to be in the mind of whoever designed that car crash.

Anyway, people seem to ignore Cubasis, been round for years and is a fantastic iPad DAW, for me it gets a great balance between ease of use and features that don’t feel at all limiting. 

Hold sleep  / wake button and say "set my alarm for 7:30am" 

That's it. 

No one like a clever clogs

Funny enough, I got around to a IOS system update today that has been queuing up for weeks (months?) and the alarm is back in the Clock app and not just in Health, so I couldn’t have been the only one. 

The alarm never left the Clock app - you could always set whatever single alarms you wanted via clock as well as edit a scheduled one set up in Health.

dindude

stickyfiddle said:

dindude said:

Danny1969 said:

dindude said:

GarageBand always seems really toy like to me, a music tool for non musicians - I might try the Logic free period, I watched a YouTube intro the other day, very few around at the time, and the guy had it sat upright on his iPad keyboard the whole time and complained of the lack of shortcut keys! Facepalm!

Anyway, some things looked good, others looked a bit clunky to be honest. I’ve lost a bit of faith in Apples ability to make things as simple as they once did, has anyone tried to set an alarm on an iPhone recently, Jesus, wouldn’t like to be in the mind of whoever designed that car crash.

Anyway, people seem to ignore Cubasis, been round for years and is a fantastic iPad DAW, for me it gets a great balance between ease of use and features that don’t feel at all limiting. 

Hold sleep  / wake button and say "set my alarm for 7:30am" 

That's it. 

No one like a clever clogs

Funny enough, I got around to a IOS system update today that has been queuing up for weeks (months?) and the alarm is back in the Clock app and not just in Health, so I couldn’t have been the only one. 

The alarm never left the Clock app - you could always set whatever single alarms you wanted via clock as well as edit a scheduled one set up in Health.

I can only assume I’m going mad then. Also plenty of threads on Reddit etc saying the same thing but most date back to 2021

dindude

Has anyone else been trialling Logic for iPad? I’ve been having a little play with it for the last couple of weeks. 

It’s obviously very comprehensive and capable but I think I’ll pass for now, maybe revisit at a later date. I’ve just got my home recording space sorted and this is a massive distraction that isn’t making any music for me. I’ll stick to Cubasis for now even though I can now see some of its limitations, I’m much more in control with it.

My biggest gripes with it (aside from the learning curve, which is my problem).

The way the workflow is, you pick a sound from the library and work with it, but I don’t find the customisation of the sound very inspiring or intuitive. I prefer to pull up a soft instrument and start from there, rather than finding a sound and working out where it came from, and when you do they don’t feel like instruments with a sound signature.

The drum editor is way over complicated.

The mixer section I thought I would love, but constant scrolling up and down to get the right view is a pain and as a result the faders don’t have enough throw.

Having said all of that, it sounds ace and very polished, although a lot of the sounds in the library are very (over) produced, so I found myself unwinding them to sit right. 

Haven’t really commented on audio recording as both Logic and Cubasis are perfectly capable and intuitive in this regard. 

I am hopeful that this will give the AU3 app format (already not bad) a kick up the bum.

JohnS37

stickyfiddle said:

Excellent. The upfront cost on Mac is equivalent to several years of subscription on iPad so it's not ridiculous (*looks at Adobe with squinty eyes...*)

But a cheaper option for those who already have it on Mac wouldn't go amiss. I'm guessing they see it as a good way in for amateurs starting out, and a useful tool for pros etc allowing easy transfer between Mac and ipad. I'm still on GarageBand tbh but I'm definitely interested in picking up a "proper" DAW

There’s not much you can’t do in GarageBand, but if you want to upgrade to Logic Pro (on a Mac, rather than an iPad) find a copy of version 9 - it does pretty well everything the latest versions do, and in some ways is easier to use, and you’ll get it for a fraction of the cost.