Usually when you bounce, you can't click anywhere -- can't do squat! Well, what if you could automate anything, change mixer volumes all while bouncing down? You can!
Assign a key command to the "Select Next Window" command. After starting a bounce, hit this key command...
You are now free to move about the cabin...
You can even start a bounce over if something doesn't go quite right by hitting the "Play" key command over and over again..... This is true from the bounce window as well as from any other window once you have used the "Next Window" key command - this key command is worth the price of Logic alone once you use it a bit... Try it...
Question: If a region starts at e.g. 1 1 1 1, and the SPL starts playing from the same position, it seems that Logic misses the first few samples - which is especially noticable with fast-attack transients.
Answer: Apparently Logic doesn't use some kind of pre-play buffering. The workaround is to have your entire song start e.g. one bar later, at 2 1 1 1, and let Logic play from 1 1 1 1. This workaround obviously doesn't work if you've set up a cycle - in which case Logic will miss the first samples when it starts playing as well. Next time it loops through the cycle it does play properly. There's no workaround for this - it's a serious shortcoming of the way Logic handles audio playback. With cycles, you could resort to using the Pause instead of the Play button/command: this will let you start playback from somewhere before the start of the cycle instead of starting at cycle-start (which is what Play does).
Question: I've noticed that Pro Tools users can have different audio tracks name the recorded audio file using different file names.
Answer: Logic can do this (since many years now). In the "Set Audio Record Path" dialogue box (Audio menu) there is an option which says "Use Audio Object Name for FileName". Make sure it's checked.
This is the only logical method to use if you're doing multitrack recording. Of course, you first need to name each Audio Object something logical (Kick, Snare, Hats.... instead of Audio 01, Audio 02, Audio 03).
In the "Set Audio Record Path" dialog (Audio menu) you'll find an option called "Use Audio Object Name for FileName". You should give your Audio Objects (i.e. the channel strips in the Audio mixer) sensible names (obviously).
Question: Is there a way to create individual folders, by song, so that all waves of each song are in their own separate folder - but also with each tracks' waves named, as they are created, with the name of the track on which they were recorded?
Answer: First thing to do is to erase any global record paths (you can view them in "Audio Record Path" and delete them in the Audio Configuration window). Then save this in your Autoload.
Next, when you save a new song, save it in a dedicated folder. This is something like "My new ballad". When you now try to record enable a track, Logic should ask you for a folder. Choose the songfolder (or a subfolder, whatever you like). Under Win98 the selection box for the audio path is always pointing to the songfolder, which is very nice. I wouldn't happen to know why this (extremely convenient!) feature isn't there under other Win versions or Mac OSs.
And again, as it is THE most important thing to keep the backup situation straight: Create a new folder for EACH and EVERY song, ALWAYS use the song folder as a record path, NEVER use a global record path! I had to clean up a friends PC recently, and it was unbelievable how much things were messed up - audiofiles ALL over the place. Believe me, it's no fun sorting out folders with 10GB+ of audiofiles, all from different songs.
With dedicated song folders (including your audiofiles) naming ain't that much of a problem either as you just know that there's only audiofiles belonging to that song.
Actually there are two features (both to be found in the Audio window's Audio File menu):
Use the move function only as long as you're sure about not using the selected files in another song as well (Logic won't find them then), otherwise better use the copy function. If you want to avoid any kind of problems, you might try the following:
Make sure the files you want to move are not used by another song first. Or, if the files are used by multiple songs, open all those songs simultaneously. Then open the Audio window, select the files you want to move, and from the Audio File menu, pick "Move File(s)". Save the open songs.
Open the Audio window, in the window's Edit menu pick "Select Unused". Hit delete: this removes the unused files from the Audio window without cleaning them from your harddisk. Then select all audiofiles that are left. In the File menu select "Move files". You can then create a folder and have the program copy all the files for you, even from one drive to another
Question: Is there a command in Logic to delete from your hard drive and from the audio window all of the audio files that are in the Audio window but not used in your song?
Answer: It's a series of commands. In the Audio window's Edit menu there is a command "Select unused". Invoke this. Then you will see which audio files get selected. Audiofiles that have the actual filename selected (not just some of the regions -pointing- to that audio file) are the ones that are not used at all in the arrange window.
Next, without deselecting any of the audio files that just got selected, go to the window's File menu and invoke the "Delete Audiofiles" command. You will then get a warning message saying "xx audiofiles to be deleted from disk. Cannot undo this operation." or something like that.
If you click OK, only the audiofiles that actually have their filenames selected will be deleted from your song and off the hard drive completely.
You should not just use the DEL-key for deletion but the "Delete Audio Files" command instead, since the DEL-key just removes them from Logics pool (i.e. from the Audio window) but not from your harddisk. Once you mess this up (read: use the DEL-key when you would like to completely erase files) you will have a hard time sorting out used/unused files on your harddisk.
Additional possibility for Windows PCs: If you however just have recorded files in that particular directory (meaning that there are no further files such as "to-be-imported" ones or ones that you might plan to use in other tunes) you could also select all of them one by one and press delete (in Explorer). Windows will then complain that some of your selected files are currently used by a running application (Logic) and won't let you delete them.
Question: How does one remove the audio record path from the autoload song? I would like to be prompted for a record path whenever I start recording in a new song.
Answer: Open the Audio Configuration window. From its Edit menu, pick "Remove Record Path". Save your Autoload
Quantizing audio regions:
If you want to apply the groove of another audio file to the "to-be-quantized" ones:
Question: I have recorded live drums, without click (free time) tempo between 84 an 86 BPM. I have separate tracks for kick and snare and I would like to quantize the "individual beats" on the tracks simultaneously to Logic's grid, without the two tracks losing sync.
Answer: Check out http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jun01/articles/logicnotes.htm for a very thorough walk-through on how to do this.
For some purposes, I sometimes have to use material that is recorded live, without any metronomes. If this material must be used together with other audio material, it sometimes must be quantized. Although Logic has a quantize engine, it often isn't strong enough to be used on material with many tempo changes, and especially it is not usable for material that has no clear beat in it.
For these situation the following steps can help. Maybe it is too obvious for most users, but I am sure it will help at least some of you.
How to sync a live drum in 20 steps:
Question: I'm trying to divide an audio file into quantized sections, and I'm looking for a relatively easy way to go about this, as the audio files can be quite long.
Answer: Hold down the "Option" key while using the scissors tool. If the scissors is 1 bar from the beginning of the region, the entire region is sliced into 1-bar segments; if the scissors is 1/8th-note from the beginning, then the entire region is sliced into 8ths, etc.
A lot of people get confused with the use of audio regions in Arrange, especially when considering overlaps, using crossfades, or digital mixdown. Here are a few "Logic" rules that should help clear things up:
You have to realize that this means that if you define a default crossfade of, say, 350ms, and try to mixdown two regions that are separated by a 300ms gap, Logic is actually going to create a crossfade between the two regions and not take the gap into consideration!
Crossfades can be created two ways:
Whenever I use a file from one song for a new one (actually I sometimes do that with loops), the first thing I do after importing them is to choose the "convert regions to individual audio files" command (Arrange window, Audio menu) and point Logic to my song directory. That way I can fool around with them as much as I want (destructive edits!) without affecting any other song.
Of course all these actions are extremely important for backing up songs. I just have to backup my song directories and I'm done as I'm always sure that there's nothing related to the song outside that directory.
Use "convert regions to individual files" (Arrange window, Audio menu) which allows easy batch processing. Also the region objects are automatically replaced in the Arrange window. The audible result therefore isn't changed but you can without further steps destructively edit the new file and no other audio regions will be affected (which sometimes is intended and sometimes not).
If you did want to do a "digital mixdown" (which is the same as merging audio regions with the glue tool) and keep the original regions:
First create a new identical track (Ctrl-Return when the track is selected) and then just make an Option-drag {PC?] copy of those regions you wish to merge. This way you will retain both the original regions and the newly copied "digital mixdown" files/regions. Note that Logic does not delete the original audio files when merging regions to create a new one, so going to the previous version of the song will load with it's original files/regions. So always be saving and keep a backup folder of at least 10 songs.
Here are some possible reasons why your CD doesn't play on a standard CD Audio player:
MIDI is not sound. You can't simply press the Bounce button on an output object, and expect the external synth's sound to magically turn up in your final song. MIDI is a series of commands to your MIDI devices, which then may produce the desired sound/audio. In order to have this sound included when you bounce the song to a final audiofile, you can do two things. First of all, feed the sounding results of the synths - via an external mixer or directly - into audio inputs of your soundcard. Then:
This procedure worked well for me, but I had recordings of each drum mic to work with. Doing the same thing on a Tom Mix, or overheads would not work well.
It does preserve the velocity of the drum well, you may need to velocity-scale or velocity-compress the output though to get the sound you want.
Question: Why do I want to use 'Strip Silence', or do I at all? It cleans up my Arrange view, certainly, but I was wondering if there's a performance "hit" or "help".
Answer: I don't know about performance, I haven't noticed too much of a difference, but cleaning out silence means using less HD space. So far for that, but for me the benefits of the strip silence function are others:
Have you ever tried that function on a drumloop? This could lead to a "Recycle"-like effect, i.e. after stripping silence in that drumloop you might be able to change Logic's tempo with the drumloop following.
I also used it for stripping out silence from vocals in freely recorded tunes. I just wanted to use the vocals on a remix of a certain tune, but the tempo was like between 74.xxxx and 75.xxxx. That would make it hard to use loops. I wanted to have it all at 75 bpm. So I simply reclocked the song, stripped silence on that vocal part and set the tempo to 75. There was just one long phrase where it didn't work too well, but a little fine-adjusting of the sequence parameters delay fixed it.
And, have you ever imported a long track from a sample CD? Those tracks usually contain more than one loop/sound. Just use strip silence to sort them out, very nice and definitely a timesaver.
One of the secret weapons of Logic is the Strip Silence tool. Don't tell anybody...
You can avoid the noise at the end of soundfiles by enabling "punch on the fly" (main Audio menu). This way Logic is always in recording mode. When you press the spacebar (or whatever your key command for "Record Toggle" is) while playing you will have a fine region of the recorded. The Soundfile still contains the Spikes, but it is out of the region-borders. It needs more harddisk space, but you can get that back by "optimising" your files. Just a workaround.
If "punch on the fly" (in the main Audio menu) is not checked that is the expected behavior. Check "punch on the fly". And: do not use the regular "Record" command, but use "Record Toggle" instead.
Note that this method of recording takes up more disk space:
With punch on the fly enabled, Logic is always recording for any record-enabled tracks, even while just in "play" mode. Then when you hit "record toggle" it defines a region start in the Arrange, and when you hit stop (or "record toggle" a second time) it defines a region end.
If you play and punch in/out, then lengthen the region boundaries after recording you'll see that it was actually recording the whole time. So having punch on the fly enabled can make for much larger audio files than you might expect, depending on how long you let it roll before/after a punch.
This delay happens when you mix NTFS and FAT32 partitions in certain combinations.. Convert all of your drives to NTFS and you shouldn't have this problem anymore. Then Win98 can't read those harddisk partitions though.
Go to Start / Help and search for "Convert NTFS": all you have to do is open a command prompt (start/run/command) then type:
convert (driver letter): /fs:ntfs
Example: "convert c: /fs:ntfs"
Open the 'Set Audio Record Path' dialog from the main Audio menu. Increase the value that's displayed next to 'Maximum Recording Time'.
The maximum length of any one song in Logic is 2138.5 measures in 4/4. This is the same as 8211840 ticks per song. This number is a fixed limit in Logic.
Logic's internal resolution is 960 ticks-per-quarter (4 x 960 = 3840 ticks per 4/4 measure), which at 120 BPM results in a time of 71,28333 minutes or 1:11:17.
The formula is: Time[minutes] = 8211840 / 960 / BPM
To increase the maximum time you have to reduce BPM. A BPM of 60 will result in a maximum time of 2:22:34, BPM 30 gives 4:45:08.
Related to the above:
Q: Are there any disadvantages when reducing BPM?
A: What happens is that the number of MIDI ticks per time will be reduced. This means that the timing resolution for MIDI data in general (be it notes or controller data or MIDI based automation) will be reduced. Whether this is a problem or not depends on the song.
Subject: Record delay vs send/return using external effect units
You'd think that with modern multichannel audio interfaces and a modern, professional audio sequencer like Logic, this would be a piece of cake, right? It turns out that there are a number of potential traps, all to do with Logic's highly inadequate record delay compensation. What follows is a run through of the general setup procedure, using my RME Multiface.
Basic Record/Playback Delay Setup
Set up a 4/4 audio click track (trim the sample starts so they are right on the beats). Use real audio, not a software instrument. Rerecord the main outs to a new track via a hardware loopback cable (i.e. cable your audiocard's outputs into its inputs). Measure the clicks with reference to bars/beats in the Sample Editor - the clicks should be (but may not be) recorded right on the beat.
If the audio driver has a record delay parameter in samples, use that to adjust. If not - use the ASIO Buffer Delay "IN" for coarse adjustment (multiples of buffer). Leave the ASIO Buffer Delay "OUT" at zero. Use the main driver playback delay for final fine adjustment (samples). Do NOT use the Arrange window's delay parameter - it's in ticks and thus tempo-dependent!
So if you are playing in time with a prerecorded track, your playing is recorded in the correct position to preserve your exact timing on playback.
The use of the playback delay to compensate is not ideal, as it will mess with the playback timing vs displayed position of any audio - this has an adverse effect on fine editing, and MIDI-to-audio sync - but Logic unfortunately does not provide a sample-accurate record delay adjustment, and has not done so since version 3.5...
Effect Return/Record Setup
You definitely want to avoid monitoring external FX returns through Logic if at all possible, since that would add 2x the audio buffer worth of latency to the return, which will adversely mess with the sound of any time-based effects (i.e. just about everything). So, monitor your external FX returns at source, or through direct hardware monitoring - in my case that's through RME TotalMix routed to the main outs for (near) zero latency.
You probably want to be able to record the external FX outputs into Logic (to free up the FX for other uses) and have it play back exactly as it was monitored, right?
Using your 4/4 audio click track, panned left, send to an external delay (approx 1/2 beat, single repeat). Pan the delay return R at source and monitor as above. Rerecord the main outs to new track via a hardware loopback cable. Measure the number of samples from a click to its delay in the Sample Editor
Now record the delay return signal to a new track. Playback just the audio click panned left & the recorded delay panned right. Rerecord the main outs to new track via hardware loopback cable. Measure the number of samples from click to delay in Sample Edit.
Both measurements must be the same for accurate recording of FX returns, but it's likely they won't be, probably because the playback delay has been messed with. Compensate by inserting a sample delay on the FX return Input Objects in Logic. Since you're not monitoring the FX returns through Logic anyway, the input delay will be recorded but not monitored (in 5.2+, but if you use an earlier version you're hosed since effects are not recorded).
Record the delay return again, play it back with the click, rerecord the outputs and measure again. Adjust the input sample delay until the recorded-&-played-back delay position is identical to the monitored delay.
Live Input Monitoring/Recording
For accurate timing, monitor any live inputs at source or through direct hardware monitoring (TotalMix), the same as for FX returns. When recorded, playback timing will be accurate. Sends from live inputs to external FX can also be applied in at source or in TotalMix. No problem.
Live Input Monitoring Through Logic
Here's where the problem starts. If you also plan to monitor some live inputs through Logic - to add Logic FX, or to control & automate the live inputs, or to add live inputs to a bounce, etc - then you'll be monitoring the live inputs with a latency of 2x the audio buffer size (or more if applied processing induces further delays). Therefore when you record a live input, on playback it will be early by that amount, since the record/playback delay is set up to compensate for zero-latency monitoring. What you heard live is not what you get on playback.
There's no set-&-forget way around this, since Logic won't let you apply a sample delay to an input without the delay also being applied to the input's monitor output from Logic. So using the same input delay trick you applied to recording the FX returns won't work - you'll wind up monitoring with even more delay, which will need yet more input compensation, and so on. You can't use the record/playback delay to compensate, because that would screw up the recording of source-monitored material.
You could conceivably monitor everything through Logic at all times, and use a single record/playback delay to compensate for all of it (with the editing & MIDI-to-audio sync shortcomings discussed, but on a larger scale as considerably more compensation is required), but that will screw with the sound of any time-based external FX as noted above.
So assuming you stick with source-monitoring the external FX returns, there are 2 options for correct playback timing of any recorded tracks that were monitored through Logic while recording:
1 - Output all such tracks to a bus, and place a Sample Delay on that bus to compensate. This will correct the playback you hear, but it won't correct the bad positioning of the audio.
2 - Physically move the recorded audio later to compensate. Uh-oh - Logic's Arrange window is not sample-accurate. And it's not possible to move a newly recorded audio region later in the Sample Editor without adding samples to the start of the file, which is a tedious process if you've just recorded a number of tracks. You'll just have to get it as close as you can in the Arrange - bear in mind that ticks are tempo dependent, so you have to calculate the number of ticks based on the current song tempo (let's not even begin to discuss Audio vs tempo changes in Logic), or use the smallest SMPTE nudge available. No fun at all.
If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm all ears...
So what about OS-X?
In Logic under OS X, the CoreAudio driver setup panel doesn't have any record/playback delay setup. If you're optimistic, you might interpret that as an indication that it's all done automatically by CoreAudio and the driver. But given Emagic's history in this area, what's the bet it's currently a big fat inaccurate mess? Rumblings from the Mobile i/o list seem to indicate this...
SPDIF DAT out to SPDIF AW8 (or whatever soundcard you may have) in. Chose "Audiowerk input - digital" in Audio > Audio Hardware & Drivers, record enable a track in the Arrange window, push Record in Logic, start DAT playback. Relax & wait.
I did this a lot on Mac with AMII and use to do it on a PC with AW8. On the Mac I sometimes use the program SoundDesigner for recording digitally. (SoundForge on the PC).
In general,
These are only basic starting points. There are no "right" and "wrong" settings -- optimal performance is entirely dependant upon the source material, production goals, and tons of other artistic criteria.