JAIME ENDICK: Hi. I’m Jaime Endick with Gearwire.Com, and I’m here with Jonathan Perl from Mac Audio Trainers, and Jonathan is going to tell us a little bit about -- Well, tell us a little about Mac Audio trainers.

JONATHAN PERL: Okay. Mac Audio Trainers is an Apple-authorized training center. But unlike pretty much any other Apple-authorized training center, we only teach Logic, nothing but Logic, and we consist of two certified trainers: myself, Jonathan Perl, and Steve Horlick who is a television and film composer.

JAIME ENDICK: Excellent. And you’re going to show us a little bit about the new thing -- the new Logic 8.

JONATHAN PERL: I can show you the new Logic 8. So, for those of you out there in internet land who are familiar somewhat with Logic 7, you’ll be relieved to know that Apple hasn’t really taken anything away that you know, need, or love in Logic 8. However, they have drastically reworked the interface, and they have done something incredibly revolutionary, which is to lower the price of their software significantly. They’ve thrown down the gauntlet, and I think a lot of new users are going to be basically attracted not only to the price and to the -- It’s really a much more user-friendly interface particularly for people who haven’t kind of figured out the kinks of the way Logic used to work, which required just a certain kind of -- You just had to know a few things.

So, in the new Logic 8, for those of you who might have the original one, there are a lot of windows. And in Logic 8, you can still work with lots of windows and I can have independent windows and screen sets but there I can -- you still see that the different window types are available, but one of the features is this new integrated single window format, and all of the main types of screens or windows are immediately available. So, I have what is called this paned window interface where I can open up or close any of the MIDI editors right within the arrange window, piano roll, sample editor if I need to, the notation editor. I also have immediate access to the audio bin, Apple Loops library, and various event editors and so forth.

They’ve also integrated their library of sounds and effects and instruments. As well increasing the number of available instruments and effects, they’ve made it a little bit easier to get around. So, for instance the new library, if I’m interested in channel strip settings, I can select the channel strip setting and all the relevant channel strip settings are immediately available. And if I select a particular plugin type, for instance the ES 2 synth, over here I see only the presets for the ES 2 synth and nothing else. So, finding presets has gotten a lot faster.

Another nice kind of set of features is the way the mixer and the track and channel creation has been changed to be more user friendly. One of the really nice things in the mixer that just seems so obvious like a “Duh-why-didn’t-we-do-this-before?” kind of thing is what they call the Single View in the mixer where when you select the channel of any kind, the mixer will then update to share you the entire signal flow just to that signal channel. So, if you have any busses or auxes, you’ll see the channel. Any of the busses or auxes that contain that signal and the output in the master channel strip only for the selected channel. And anybody has done any mixing can tell you that that’s kind of cool because you’re always like wondering, “Now, where is that aux channel that has the reverb returning for that guitar sound? Didn’t I copy that send over there and delay the copy? And where is that?” and now, a single click can see only those channel strips that carry that signal. Very nice little feature, and it’s just indicative of the kind of changes they made to make it more user friendly.

Another example of that kind of attention to user friendliness. In the old days, the bad old days, creating tracks or channels in Logic sometimes required going to this place called the Environment where you would create channels, channel fitters, and then you would go and you would assign tracks in your main arrange to those channels. But in Logic 8, they kind of said, “Okay, the users aren’t going to know the difference between a track and channel,” so why don’t we just say, “How many tracks do you need?” “Twenty-four.” “Do I need them to be audio or virtual instruments?” “Should they be record enabled ascending order or input enabled?” And with a single command, those tracks and channels are created. If you get rid of the tracks, the channel objects are taken away from your session automatically. But if you’re old school and you like to keep/create custom channel configurations, you can turn off that feature. It’s called Automatic Management of Channel Strip Objects. So, you can be old school or you can be new school. You can have it manage all that stuff for you and forego the environment completely but it’s all still there if you need it, so.

JAIME ENDICK: All right. What’s your favorite feature?

JONATHAN PERL: My favorite feature? I think I like the automatic management of channel strip objects and the mixer stuff, but frankly I’m just getting to know all the new features, and I keep finding new, cool little things, and surprisingly a few bugs as well. They have a great new plugin called the Delay Designer which is a completely customizable multi-tap delay that I think I’ll be having a lot of fun with. I guess I’m a geek, so.

JAIME ENDICK: I think we are. That’s excellent. Thank you so much, Jonathan.

JONATHAN PERL: Yeah. Thanks. Okay.

JAIME ENDICK: I’m Jaimie Endick, and you’re watching Gearwire.Com.