Product Reviews

The addition of GarageBand to the iLife suite was Apple's realisation that its customers were not only music fans, but music makers, too. Having bought Emagic, Apple has shown its commitment to serious music making with the release of Logic Express 7 and Pro 7, both of which now only run on Mac OS X.

As with Final Cut Express or Pro, the two Logic versions operate identically, but the features and prices vary. If you require high-resolution audio, unlimited input channels, beat mapping and surround sound mixing, Logic Pro delivers. However, if you need more flexibility than GarageBand, you can cope with only having 12 audio inputs (which is enough for a live band), and don't need all of Pro's high-end effects processors, but want a sequencer that has a good all-round bundle of effects, instruments and score printing too, then Express has it, and at a fraction of the price.

When you run Logic Express for the first time, it goes through a setup procedure enabling you to customise some features, such as the number of audio tracks and thetype of audio interface.

While the new look of the Logic interface will be familiar to you if you're a GarageBand user, there's little else to make you feel at home. To explain the differences between the two applications, Apple supplies a 30-page booklet. Logic has quite a different approach, even dragging and dropping files out of the Loop Browser and into Logic's Arrange page timeline works differently.

Unlike GarageBand, Loop track sections aren't repeated by dragging - you need to specifically copy or repeat them, or use the Loop option in the Parameters section. Dragging the ends will only resize the existing audio playback duration. Still, Logic Express does inherit all the Apple loops and GarageBand instruments, and imports GarageBand songs, too.

Some cosmetic changes aren't too helpful; the Zoom sliders appear at opposite corners of the screen (rather than together like the replaced Telescope tools were), with the longitudinal zoom obscured by the Transport bar by

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default. However, Screensets allow the layout to be changed using the numeric keypad to store and recall favourite positioning and sizing of windows on screen. Preference menus are greatly improved with toolbar navigation icons and tabbed menus.

Primarily, Logic Express has three different kinds of track: Audio, Instrument and Midi. Use Audio to record performances from any source, such as guitar or vocals. Instrument refers to Logic's internal synths or third-party Audio Units plug-ins that play via Midi. Midi tracks are generally used to record with an external Midi instrument.

All tracks have automation options for mixing. Realtime effects treatments on Audio and Instrument tracks drain CPU power, but the Freeze option helps preserve it. Activating Freeze swiftly creates an audio file comprised of the effected audio or virtual instruments. The real-time processing is suspended and the Freeze file is replayed instead. This is useful when the EXSP24 MkII is in use (a player-only version of Pro's editable sampler), as it streams sample data from disk that can affect performance. The EXSP24 MkII includes a comprehensive sample library and will import data from Akai sampler CDs. Other bundled synths include the EFM 1 (FM synth) ES-M (monosynth), ES-P (polysynth) ES-E (ensemble atmospheres) and ES 1 (analogue-style synth).

All these great features are rather let down by what has been removed from Logic Express. While the four-band EQ is forgivable (Pro has eight bands), some aspects appear intended to deliberately frustrate users and to tempt an upgrade. So, rather than disabling some esoteric features, you find you can't draw velocity curves in the Matrix editor's Hyper Draw section. Volume and pan data can be drawn but not velocity, which is a pretty basic requirement. The separate Hyper Editor does allow you to do this, but it's for drums only.

Moreover, Pro users will notice that the Note Events section within Functions is missing, but the manual says it's there, referring to the Force Legato (very useful) and Split Notes - features that are both absent from Logic Express along with a range of note editing shortcuts. Also, when mixing, the Platinum verb effect didn't appear to be working until the Mix setting (default at 100%) was moved back and forth to wake it up, after which the effect could be heard.

Logic Express is a curious mixture of excellent features and strange omissions that impede productivity. However, despite the missing functionality in the editing feature set, Logic Express 7 is terrific value and has more than enough to satisfy anyone making the step up from GarageBand.