5 things I love about Logic Pro 8

As a home studio nut I think one of the better DAWs out there is Logic Pro 8. Sure, Pro-tools is obviously a huge home studio DAW combined with the small M-boxes but I like the non-constraints Logic offers from the get-go. You don’t need special hardware(well, you do need a Mac), you can just plug in any interface and you’re good to go.

Here are five things that I think makes Logic such a great in-the-box sequencer/mixer

1. Comp/Swipe feature

• The comp/swipe feature is an amazing editing tool for comping many different tracks together. It’s intuitive and easy to take how many different takes you have and make them into one good one. I wrote a tutorial about how to use this feature at Audiotuts which you can read more about here.

2. Space Designer

• I am a huge fan of Logic’s convolution reverb, Space Designer. Loading preset patches with impulse responses from some great rooms makes a highly powerful reverb engine. It also allows you to edit the envelope and equalize the impulse response among other things

3. The built-in guitar amp

• I know what you must be thinking. Logic’s guitar amp? Seriously, why not use a decent plug-in like Guitar-rig og Amplitube? I actually like the guitar-amp a lot, it doesn’t really make convincing overdriven or distorted sounds but I am pretty content with the clean sounds I can squeeze out of it.

4. The Phase Eq

• It doesn’t always fit on all songs but the linear phase eq sounds pretty sweet on vocals. It screws with the phasing on the track so it makes it almost sound like there is intense doubling.

5. The amount of tweakable presets

• For beginners, it’s amazing how many presets are in everything. From default compressor settings to group track settings you can always find a good starting point if you are unsure with what you are doing and just want to experiment.

Obviously Logic has a whole lot more to offer and I didn’t even mention the amazing value it has when it comes to electronic music production with their powerful synth engines and drum machine. But as a mixing machine Logic is a strong powerhouse and is deservedly up there in the top DAWs.

How to make the most of your CPU in Logic Pro 8.

I run Logic at home for my demos and mixes, both for private and school projects. Sometimes the tracks end up being quite a few and my semi-formidable Macbook just can not keep up with all the CPU my plugins keep eating. Luckily, Logic has a feature to help smooth things out.

Using the “Freeze Track” feature you can effectively freeze those tracks that you are not editing in any way, freeing up CPU for other tasks. Say you need to run Guitar Rig, which eats a whole lot of CPU, you can freeze all the other tracks so you can run the plug-in more smoothly. You can toggle the Freeze button in View>Configure track header in the arrangement window. Then you just press the freeze button on any of the tracks you need to freeze, thereby freeing up processing power.

I hope that trick comes in handy next time you are using some heavy artillery on a not so heavy computer. If you have any other tips for optimizing your computer please let us know in the comments.