Logic Pro X Updated With Improved 12-Core Mac Pro Support, App Enhancements and Fixes

[phas3d]

I wouldn't put it that dramatically. I did 96k/24bit recording on a quad core G5 a while back and would run nearly 30 real time effects - reverbs, compressors/limiters/gates, the usual. I can't recall the CPU going above 50% capacity.

That was an 9 year old machine, and I have to say peeking back in on the digital audio industry, not a lot has changed. Most of the prosumer gear is still 96k/24bit while the pro studios go for 196kHz, but that was around back in 2005 as well. The one thing that has changed is that desktop and mobile CPUs have gotten a ton more powerful with more and more cores.

I suppose you mean 192KHz.
Times have changed since you worked with your G5. Many projects now are 60+ tracks and plug-in count is sometimes 200+. Also many plug-developers are now into analog modeling plug-ins that are real CPU hogs. Try instantiating 80 Slate Digital VCCs followed by 80 VTMs, add EQ, compression, convolution reverbs and an I7 iMac will crumble with the CPU demand.

 

[dec.]

Since we have our logic friends here - is it normal that I have a growing latency after my macbook sleeps (from a few MS to unbearable)? (that sounds kind of kinky) I usually need to either reboot or at least disable core audio for a minute or so to get back to the regular low latency (Guitar VIA foot pedal USB)?

 

[subsonix]

Kind of... its true that you need CPU cycles to deal with I/O, but unless you're running input effects (i can't imagine why) then the input buffer size is more constrained by how your machine is sized for I/O - what your RAM and disk throughput looks like.

Lower latency means less time to get the job done, which translates to more work for the CPU. Add to this, higher sample rate and more tracks and CPU intensive plugins.

Besides, if you were running on the edge previously, then spreading the work over 24 cores is a better use of the hardware, with a lower chance of dropped samples.

 

[longofest]

If by "Input effects" you mean "effects processing for live guitars, vocals, etc." then…well, hopefully that answers your question.

dealing with live, then sure. i was referring to recording... not sure the rationale for putting real-time effects on the input stream before it is recorded to disk. record the guitar and add the effects in post... right?

I didn't have a question. I was initially responding to a comment about how quickly CPU gets used up. In my admittedly relatively limited experience, while I have certainly felt the need for a good CPU, I have always had a good amount of headroom, and that was running multiple effects on 96k/24 bit projects on 9 year old hardware. That being said, I have not really dabbled into heavy sampling or software instruments - I'll admit those plug-ins completely slipped my mind. When I thought about plug-ins, i was just thinking about effects. So my point may not be so much of a point anymore.

 

[clickerclacker]

I just hope they've fixed the corrupt MIDI region bug where a random key on the piano roll would play a wrong note persistently. Massive time-waster!

 

[dannys1]

I wouldn't put it that dramatically. I did 96k/24bit recording on a quad core G5 a while back and would run nearly 30 real time effects - reverbs, compressors/limiters/gates, the usual. I can't recall the CPU going above 50% capacity.

That was an 9 year old machine, and I have to say peeking back in on the digital audio industry, not a lot has changed. Most of the prosumer gear is still 96k/24bit while the pro studios go for 196kHz, but that was around back in 2005 as well. The one thing that has changed is that desktop and mobile CPUs have gotten a ton more powerful with more and more cores.

Yes and I was able to do 60 track projects on my old G5 but as things move on so does plugin power.

You've obviously never heard of Nebula, try running an instance of that on every track even with 10 and an i5 will by crying. Softube, Slate, Waves and others now have very advanced analog emulations attempting to recreate all the non linear-arties of analog gear which make use of lots of modern CPU cycles. Softsynths have become more and more advanced the more CPU power there is the more realistically they attempt to emulate all the detail in the original units. Its very possible on my quad core 3.3ghz i7 iMac to load up a single instance of Reaktor and use 15% CPU.

This will only continue and continue, plugin manufactures try to make low CPU plugins, but if they could they'd eat 50% of an i7 just trying to emulate one piece of a machine. Nebula uses so much processing power and ram they have a server edition in which you can link a server machine and off load some of the processing and memory to another unit.

So yes, thinks have changed and 12-Core support is useful, and lots of pro studios buying a top end Mac Pro will welcome it.

 

[OS X Dude]

You can also turn on/off any plug-ins on a channel strip by holding the mouse button down and dragging over their on/off switches. Like how you can with the Solo and Mute functions across channels.

 

[AppleInLVX]

Let's hope Aperture gets some attention next.

I've pretty much given up on it. If there's nothing said at WWDC about Aperture, I'll class it as abandonware and move over to Lightroom like pretty much every other photographer I know. Sigh.

 

[UBS28]

Music doesn't sound beter than 10 years ago with alle those fancy plug-ins. And I prefer my hardware over plug-ins anyway soundwise.

 

[DanPhillips]

dealing with live, then sure. i was referring to recording... not sure the rationale for putting real-time effects on the input stream before it is recorded to disk. record the guitar and add the effects in post... right?

Regardless of whether you print the effects or not, it's useful to be able to hear them when recording - amps and delays when recording guitars, for instance, or reverb when recording vocals. The low latencies required to do this comfortably (64 or 128 samples) cause an increased load on the CPU, and mean that variations in processing load aren't averaged out as much as they are with longer latencies, increasing the probability of CPU overs.

The same holds true for latencies low enough to play software synths comfortably.

 

[iBug2]

Music doesn't sound beter than 10 years ago with alle those fancy plug-ins. And I prefer my hardware over plug-ins anyway soundwise.

It's impossible that Apple gave up on Aperture. No abandonware would have been updated that frequently. Aperture is probably the one app that received the most point updates over time.

 

[Jacquesvw]

.

 

[milo]

Glad to see all these fixes although it's pretty amazing it took Apple this long to support 12 core considering they have been shipping that many cores since 2010!

The biggest problem with Logic has been that live tracks only use a single CPU core. I assume that wasn't fixed in this update, anyone checked it?

 

[AppleInLVX]

I agree. I'm going to do that same.

Wow, you mean there's TWO of us who still use Aperture? Crazy, man.

 

[maplingstorie]

12 cores is overkill for audio. Heck, I can't even ramp the CPU to 100% with 6 cores with 40+ tracks of individual plugins.

 

[milo]

12 cores is overkill for the sessions I'm working on.

Fixed that for you.

 

[iBug2]

Btw, is the 12 core thingy only for the nMP or the old MP's with 12 cores would benefit as well? It'd be weird if they didn't.

 

[Rog210]

Regardless of whether you print the effects or not, it's useful to be able to hear them when recording - amps and delays when recording guitars, for instance, or reverb when recording vocals. The low latencies required to do this comfortably (64 or 128 samples) cause an increased load on the CPU, and mean that variations in processing load aren't averaged out as much as they are with longer latencies, increasing the probability of CPU overs.

The same holds true for latencies low enough to play software synths comfortably.

I'll often be in a situation where a track is 90% done, using Ozone, BFD, Ivory, etc. all playing back fine on a 1024 buffer. Then I decide I need to re-record or add a guitar part. I set the buffer down to 128 to do this and the Mac doesn't have the power to play the project at this setting.

People commenting that faster/more core CPUs aren't needed for audio don't know what they're talking about. Freezing tracks to reduce CPU is a PITA.

 

[NY Guitarist]

Music doesn't sound beter than 10 years ago with alle those fancy plug-ins. And I prefer my hardware over plug-ins anyway soundwise.

Your statement is not relevant to those wanting to use Logic Pro X to the fullest with a nMP.

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12 cores is overkill for audio. Heck, I can't even ramp the CPU to 100% with 6 cores with 40+ tracks of individual plugins.

Film scores with multiple VI's will routinely bring a computer to its limit.

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If by "Input effects" you mean "effects processing for live guitars, vocals, etc." then…well, hopefully that answers your question.

No-one who is a serious user of audio production applications has any question about the benefits of greater CPU power. As CPU power increases, we are asking more of our plug-ins in terms of both functionality and fidelity. I don't see that slowing down any time soon.

Is this the Dan Phillips of Korg Oasys PCI fame? I still have that in an old B&W G3!!

And, although I never had the chance to contribute, I was part of the SynthKit developers group.

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I've pretty much given up on it. If there's nothing said at WWDC about Aperture, I'll class it as abandonware and move over to Lightroom like pretty much every other photographer I know. Sigh.

I hear you on this. Would be a shame to see it go away. But hopefully Aperture X is in the works.

 

[barkmonster]

Any news on a 64bit Logic Node?

I currently have 2 upgrades before I'm in a position to buy any new Mac that only runs Mavericks.

Reason 7 upgrade (purely for the software synths and a lot of the Rack Extension format software synths that are VST/AU only and more expensive than the Rack Extension equivalent).

I've used an older version for years and it's terrible for sequencing etc... but the instruments are excellent via Rewire with PT LE handling mixing/editing/arranging. Even more so once I can add ABL2 and a few other Rack Extension format plug-ins that are a headache to use with Reaper, Reason and PT at the same time because of latency and CPU overhead.

Pro Tools 11 upgrade from PT LE / Logic X

Now the reason behind concidering jumping back to Logic after using PT since 4.5 under Mac OS 9 is that I'm plain sick of AVIDs prices, forced obscolecence, restictions of their proprietary AAX format compared with allowing at least 64bit VSTs to be used with the one wrapper application they forced off the market for dubious reasons and the fact they've played the industry standard routine to gouge people for years now.

One other reason is that my Macs are networked and it would be great to just dial in more CPU power by adding another system for use with Logic Node. I have a fairly old Mac now and any quad i7 Mac Mini would obliterate it but I'd still use my existing Mac Mini hooked up to my TV and networked via gigiabit the way I have my old G4 at present as a backup server (minus the TV/media centre functionality).

 

[milo]

Btw, is the 12 core thingy only for the nMP or the old MP's with 12 cores would benefit as well? It'd be weird if they didn't.

Should be for both, Logic users have been talking about the lack of 12 core support for years now, it's just the number of threads the app supports. There's even a preference menu that allows manually selecting the number of threads/cores, and it only went up to 16 (now it should be 24 with hyperthreading).

Any news on a 64bit Logic Node?

Apple hasn't updated it since the early Logic 9 days, looks like they've dumped it. If you need to do that sort of thing I'd look into third party options like VE pro or bidule.

 

[NY Guitarist]

Any news on a 64bit Logic Node?

Apple hasn't updated it since the early Logic 9 days, looks like they've dumped it. If you need to do that sort of thing I'd look into third party options like VE pro or bidule.

Agreed.

Now the reason behind concidering jumping back to Logic after using PT since 4.5 under Mac OS 9 is that I'm plain sick of AVIDs prices, forced obscolecence, restictions of their proprietary AAX format compared with allowing at least 64bit VSTs to be used with the one wrapper application they forced off the market for dubious reasons and the fact they've played the industry standard routine to gouge people for years now.

This somewhat captive customer abuse is exactly why I got out of PT while it was still called Digidesign. Besides the hardware upgrade path that locked users into buying new systems just to keep PT software current, native systems had matured and allowed the user to deploy the I/O of their choosing.

Made the jump to non-Avid apps years ago and have no regrets.

 

[217833]

I personally don't understand the idea of using 12 cores for Logic (or any music software), but I suppose it's not for me.

If you don't understand, yep, it's probably not for you.

But for someone seriously working on audio, it means A LOT! It surely does mean something I do understand pretty well and just make wish a new Mac Pro 12 Core even more

12 cores is overkill for audio. Heck, I can't even ramp the CPU to 100% with 6 cores with 40+ tracks of individual plugins.

40+ tracks is quite "nothing" by today's standard (I often have over 30 tracks just for the drums part). I haven't work on project with less than 100 tracks for a while now, all of them having at least 3, 4 or even more audio plugins... and with at least 50 tracks of Virtual Instruments.

Try some of the heavy plugins (Diva in HQ mode, LuSH-101, etc...) and your 6 cores won't last after few tracks already. Try now to do some motion picture soundtrack and sound fx, etc... and you will hope to have a Mac Pro with 48 core

One of my last project I did was a short musical movie and the mixer guy started to be crazy to mix all tracks together because his Protools HD3 rig couldn't get enough tracks to run the whole project, even with the help of the DSP cards and the old 2008 Mac Pro 8 Core.... and guess what? It was still mixing through the SSL instead to do all in the box.

So if you can't ramp your CPU... good for you! But some of us, unfortunately, have a pretty good idea how to.

 

[thenightwatcher]

Think about film scorers (which is fairly big part of the industry). This isn't about pop music and just about track count and plugins and making music sound "better". Film composers tend to use several MacPros networked together, distributing the CPU and RAM load across them. It takes multiple apps working together (via rewire, VEPro, etc..), and these apps (by loading up tens of thousands of samples (orchestral violins, battle drums, etc..), and stream them throughout the I/O, and all of this uses a lot of RAM and CPU.

For instance I personally use 2 MacPros (a 2008 8-core and a 2010 12-core) as a host/slave. One has 32GBs of RAM, the other 64GBs. All are maxed out with SSDs and SSD RAIDs and run several apps that are connected internally in a virtual host/slave environment to make music. These MacPro are maxed out and they still struggle. And my system is modest compared to some bigger names. Some of the big names use 10 or more state of the art, maxed out workstations, to create a film's soundtrack.

On my system, I use Digital Performer as my host DAW (or sometimes Logic X too) and it will use 4-6 GBs of Real Memory during sessions, then with VEPro as the slave (and apps or plugins like Kontakt within that environment), that takes up the rest of the available RAM and CPU. However, I am able to load up full orchestras, alternate ensembles, sound design apps, and yes, plugins. I currently need another MacPro for Pro Tools.

I'm nearly peaking the CPU and RAM of both machines during the entire session.

Next time you go enjoy your summer blockbuster, think about that orchestra you're listening to and ask yourself, "Is it real, or did some poor bloke sitting in a studio create this lovely music with a bank of pimped out MacPros?"

That's why Logic needed to access all 12 cores evenly. Other DAWs have been ahead on that one.

 

[phas3d]

Any news on a 64bit Logic Node?

I wouldn't count on it but many producers, specially those into big film scoring projects are using VEP5 with great success. You can even use it on the same computer to run 32 bit plug-ins.