Audacity Works

My pleasure, guys. Let me know how it works for ya'. About 100 projects converted, 150 or so to go!

After over twelve years as a TDM Logic user, it's finally time to dump Digi and embrace host-based Apogee Symphony. The bad news is that 250+ songs needed to be converted, and I had no idea where to start. Apple has their own walkthrough (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2891), but it's incomplete, and nearly all references to it online are followed by claims that it doesn't work. Not promising. This post should hopefully fill in the gaps. PART ONE: PREPPING THE SONGS 1. Open Logic. Go to Logic Pro > Preferences > Audio. 2. Click the "Devices" tab. Click the "Core Audio" tab below it. UNcheck both the Enabled and Universal Track Mode boxes. 3. Click the "DAE" tab. Check the Enabled box. A dialog box appears—Click OK. 4. Click the "DTDM" tab. UNcheck the Universal Track Mode box. Check the Enabled box. A dialog box appears—Click OK. Click Apply Changes. 5. If the Enabled boxes on the DAE and DTDM tabs were not BOTH checked to begin with, QUIT LOGIC. 6. Restart Logic. 7. Open the first DAE/DTDM project you wish to convert. Go to Window > Environment. From the upper left-hand pull-down menu, select "Mixer". You should see all your audio objects. NOTE: We're about to *permanently delete* the settings for all of your DAE objects. If you have any important mix, pan, plugin, routing or automation settings you wish to keep, write them down on a piece of paper. Don't bother documenting your DTDM channel settings, as these should transfer over fine. 8. Draw a box around ALL of your DAE auxes, busses (including ESB), output, and Master objects. DON'T select any DTDM objects unless you want to lose them too. Press Delete. A dialog box appears—click "Delete Anyway". 9. Locate all of your audio track objects. If any of them are stereo linked, jot these down on a sheet of paper. Unlink all stereo-linked audio track objects. 10. Draw a box around all DAE audio track objects. Don't select any DTDM objects. From the environment's upper left-hand Device setting, select "DTDM". Poof! There goes all your hard work. 11. Check your piece of paper and select two audio objects that used to be stereo linked (highlight both of them). Click the stereo link button in the lower left-hand corner of the odd-numbered object. On my particular system, the link doesn't appear until I click in the background or select another pair of objects for linking. Relink any other objects meant to be stereo. 12. Make sure there are ZERO remaining DAE objects in the environment. If even one DAE object sneaks through, you won't be able to convert to Core Audio. 13. Go to File > Save As. Check the Include Assets box. Check the Copy external audio files to project folder box. If desired, check the Copy EXS instruments to project folder. Choose a different name. I added "HOST" to the end of each project name so I'd know exactly which files should be converted. 14. Repeat steps 7 through 13 for any songs you wish to convert. It's a huge pain to convert projects one by one, as Logic has to be rebooted twice for each project. I'll maybe prep a dozen or so projects before converting them all with the procedure below... PART TWO: CONVERTING THE PROJECTS 1. Once you've prepped all the projects you wish to convert, Go back to Logic Pro > Preferences > Audio. 2. Click the "Core Audio" tab. Check the Enabled box. Leave Universal Track mode unchecked! 3. Click the "DAE" tab. UNcheck the Enabled box. A dialog box appears—Click OK. 4. Click the "DTDM" tab. UNcheck the Enabled box. A dialog box appears—Click OK. Click Apply Changes. 5. QUIT LOGIC and then restart it. 6. Open the first prepped Logic project from Part One. If you did everything right a dialog box should appear, asking if you'd like to convert the project to Core Audio. NOTE: If you don't get the dialog box, this means you still have one or more DAE objects in your mixer environment. At this point, you can still probably go into the environment, delete them, save the project, reload the project, and everything should now work. 7. Open the environment. Note that all of your objects are now Core Audio, but some may have had their outputs disabled. Select these objects and reassign them to Outputs 1-2. 8. Resave your project and close it. 9. Open the next prepped Logic project and repeat steps 6 through 8 until you've converted all the prepped projects from Part One.

At a high enough zoom setting in No Overlap drag mode, dragging an audio region to the right so it barely touches another region (and therefore, should shorten) completely deletes said region. Almost every Logic user I know experiences this. Fixed? That's the only one that completely drives me nuts.

Sonar's gonna cost you another $500. Surely you have enough money to drop on another DAW. See ya!

Hi Guys, It may be something obvious I'm missing, but I'd love to be able to assign fade commands to key bindings. Such as "Fade all selected regions out by Xxx ticks". This way, I could simply select a bunch of regions (contiguous or otherwise) and set fade adjustments instantly. A huge boon when editing vocal tracks that may have hundreds of edits. The fade tool works on only one region and even if it didn't, it'd still be nice to hit one key command. Right now I spend WAY too much time mousing up to the Inspector's Fade type parameter to choose "EqP" and then "5 ticks" (or whatever). If this isn't possible, has anyone built a macro in Automator that may achieve this? The ultimate goal is to assign buttons on my Euphonix MC Control to "Fade out 5 ticks", "Fade out 10 ticks", "Crossfade XS 5 ticks", "Crossfade EqP 5 ticks", etc. Or is there some other workflow I might be missing? I'm even willing to purchase QuickKeys if someone's had luck building macros with that. Thanks in advance.

Here's a tutorial I wrote. It's a little old, but most of its concepts still apply. http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=254 I'm running TDM Logic right now. There are still some issues, but it's the most stable it's been since Logic 4.8 on OS 8.6.

Really? I'm on a dual 2.0GHz G5 and didn't notice a difference, at least when using CTRL-SHIFT scrolling while zoomed in. Still dog-slow here. I'll try again tonight.

I'm running a Logic TDM rig with success that can, at best, be described as "sigh...". It's certainly better than with Logic 6, and better than with Logic 7, but it's nowhere near (as in galaxies away) as stable as my old G3/333/PT|MIXplus/Logic 4.7 on OS9 rig. Lots of really weird issues abound, like stereo linked files suddenly unlinking (??!@#$!!), random crashes, molasses-slow TDM plugin instanciation, distorted DTDM tracks, and countless other oddities. Logic 8.0.1 did seem to fix the crashes when simply coloring a region. And I worked for about 45 minutes tonight without a single crash. So that's positive. Dual 2.0 GHz G5 w/ 2.5GB of RAM PT|HD3 Accel w/ 192 I/O and Apogee AD-8000 ProTools 7.1cs-Whatever's newest as of last week Of course, if I'm the only TDM Logic guy you know in LA, note that I'm finally dumping it all for an Apogee Symphony/Mac Pro rig shortly after NAMM.

They certainly did back with Logic 4.7 on my old beige G3/333 running OS 8.6 and PT MIXplus. Absolutely rock solid, no crashes ever... well, except when trying to open large Quicktime videos, but I always chalked that up to the ancient system. Logic TDM guys have really been given the shaft since then. Don't know who to blame—Apple or Digi—Doesn't matter; I'm dumping PT|HD for an Apogee Symphony system shortly after NAMM. Simply can't get any work done in the studio right now. Have been doing everything on my laptop.

No, there's absolutely, positively a difference. Measurable as well. Running 16 channels from a 192 I/O into a Dangerous 2-Bus LT. When bouncing back into an Apogee AD-8000 with LP7, I had to not only turn down the 2-Bus's trim all the way, but the output faders and master fader had to be turned down slightly as well, otherwise the AD-8000's inputs would clip (or the master bus would clip when bouncing internally). No longer—The output and master faders are all at unity and the 2-Bus is pushed higher. As I understand it, DAE tracks aren't running on Logic's audio engine at all; Logic's interface is basically (???) painted on top of the ProTools engine. I remember a while back where one of the ProTools DAE updates dramatically changed the headroom of the entire system. I also remember when they started organizing TDM plugins into categories. Apple certainly added the latter with LP8; perhaps they finally implemented PT's increased headroom as well? Either way, there is absolutely, positively a notable difference. My mixes all sounded completely different, and will most likely have to be remixed, but that's because everything sounds better. Perhaps that's because something was amiss all these years (which would explain why I've hated my mixes since switching from MIXplus through a Mackie D8B to HD in the box), but it's back now, baby! Oh, and someone on the Apple forum mentioned that the DSP spike distorting all DTDM plugins bug can be temporarily alleviated by simply switching the global bit depth and then back. Guess one doesn't have to restart Logic after all.

I just noticed that one can drag audio regions directly from the arrange into the EXS24 editor. New or just new to me? Either way, it's really cool.

Decided to play Russian Roulette tonight and install LP8 on my G5/Dual 2GHz/2.5GB RAM/10.4.10 with PT|HD3 Accel and PT 7.2. Not only did the installer see the ProTools hardware and allow the installation of ESB TDM, but upon first opening the app, the default template automatically asked if I wanted to create DAE tracks. Haven't tried to create a new template from scratch, but a dozen or so LP7 projects opened with almost no issues. A few extremely pleasant surprises: 1. LP8 TDM sounds better than under LP7. Definitely. Notably. I could even boost my output and master fader objects higher before clipping. Everything sounds brighter, more open, and with more definition. Either that or I'm completely insane. 2. Although I haven't found where one can name inputs in a new LP8 project, the I/O labels in LP7 projects showed up without a hitch. 3. TDM plugins show up in categories now instead of one long list! Yeah! 4. DTDM is WAY more stable. I opened every single plugin and not one crashed (the first time that's happened since buying HD four years ago). Although clipping the DTDM engine still results in nasty distortion across all DTDM tracks (until rebooting-dammit!), at least this time a dialog box pops up warning me about it. 5. Selecting a DAE audio object will indeed display its bus as the second channel strip. I kinda expected this feature to be stripped out for us TDM guys. 6. So far, all plugins work great. All is not perfect, however: 1. The screen seems really sluggish compared to LP7, especially when zoomed way in. Switching screensets is slower too. Hopefully there's more optimization to be done. Running a hardcore ATI video card for the 30" Cinema Display. Lower resolutions help a bit, but at the expense of precious real estate. 2. Clipping the DTDM engine still results in distortion across all DTDM tracks until reboot. Mentioned above. Completely forgot to test AudioSuite, DTDM audio tracks, Access Virus TDM, the non-overlapping objects disconnecting stereo-linked regions bug, and graphical timestretch, but I'm optimistic, despite my historically disasterous luck. Tomorrow. Thus far, I couldn't be more thrilled with this beast. Not only did Apple keep TDM support alive, but they actually improved it.

How dirty do you want it? Logic's overdrive > Logic's BitCrusher = Insanity If it's too over the top, roll off a bit of the highs with the channel EQ.

Wow, that's really cool! How hard was it to program that? Is it simply an Apple Script or is there serious hacking going on?

Agreed, but a script would certainly work for nearly everything else in the meantime (and unless you're performing graphical timestretching, one could still utilize Pitch n' Time with LP8's new pencil-tool timestretch). Ideally, the feature should be implemented like AudioSuite in PT or Pyramix.