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Are Logic's developers reading this forum ?


bigramp

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If so : please fix the latency compensation mess. Logic right now can't do midi controlled sidechaining, which almost EVERYONE uses in modern production on Ableton Live.

 

Logic can actually do it, but as soon as there's a plugin with LATENCY in ANY of your busses : you're screwed, sidechain will be out of sync. Got a reverb that induces latency ? you're screwed. Want to use a limiter with latency on your instrument bus ? you're screwed. This just makes Logic useless for this type of projects. Even using LFOTOOL on a track AFTER a plugin that has latency : it will be out of sync.

 

Ableton will latency compensate your craziest bus dreams, and allow you to do this trick without a hitch. I love Logic, but for modern production i can't stay on this boat.

 

As a 15 years user of Logic : please fix this !

 

Thanks

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I said this a few times now here and there. This is a bug in Logic that will probably never get fixed otherwise it would be fixed by now. Mostly EDM producers experience this because they use these techniques. I have yet to experience this with my genre. It’s definitely not a problem for MODERN PRODUCTION, it’s a problem for a certain TYPE of music with LOGIC. Certain genres need a specific DAW. For EDM you maybe better off with Ableton?

 

If so : please fix the latency compensation mess. Logic right now can't do midi controlled sidechaining, which almost EVERYONE uses in modern production on Ableton Live.

 

Logic can actually do it, but as soon as there's a plugin with LATENCY in ANY of your busses : you're screwed, sidechain will be out of sync. Got a reverb that induces latency ? you're screwed. Want to use a limiter with latency on your instrument bus ? you're screwed. This just makes Logic useless for this type of projects. Even using LFOTOOL on a track AFTER a plugin that has latency : it will be out of sync.

 

Ableton will latency compensate your craziest bus dreams, and allow you to do this trick without a hitch. I love Logic, but for modern production i can't stay on this boat.

 

As a 15 years user of Logic : please fix this !

 

Thanks

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I love Logic stock plugins so I'm not feeling like moving to another DAW but there are some bugs that makes me tired from time to time that's why i asked for a stable version of Logic.

 

Actually i didn't get what you saying in this post clearly. What do you mean by Midi-Controlled Sidechain? I thought you were talking about a Sidechain plugin like Compressor reacting to the Sidechain source delayed, isn't that the case?

Edited by djsnake
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I said this a few times now here and there. This is a bug in Logic that will probably never get fixed otherwise it would be fixed by now. Mostly EDM producers experience this because they use these techniques. I have yet to experience this with my genre. It’s definitely not a problem for MODERN PRODUCTION, it’s a problem for a certain TYPE of music with LOGIC. Certain genres need a specific DAW. For EDM you maybe better off with Ableton?

 

Sidechaining has been used across the board in productions of all kinds since it was first thought up by Douglas Shearer in the 1930s as a way to tame sibilance in movie dialogue.

 

Great plugins like Trackspacer are rendered useless by it:

 

Can't be swept under the run as some EDM thing. Even if it were, electronic music type production is dominant in pretty much all mainstream music: pop, hip hop, much of country, latin, modern rock. Most of the music being consumed by the world. Logic has to step up and fix this.

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I’m on Logic 10.6 and Side Chaining is built into many plugins. Most ‘ducking’ is triggered by transients in an audio file. There are different ways to get the same effect with midi. Do you want midi info to be the trigger, or are you talking about ducking the midi volume values on another track?

 

I ask because I’ve been doing something like side chaining for years, but i didn’t know it was called ducking to get that pulsing effect on the amplitude of other tracks until recently. Logic 10.6 has side chaining to make it easier for EDM producers.

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I’m on Logic 10.6 and Side Chaining is built into many plugins. Most ‘ducking’ is triggered by transients in an audio file. There are different ways to get the same effect with midi. Do you want midi info to be the trigger, or are you talking about ducking the midi volume values on another track?

 

I ask because I’ve been doing something like side chaining for years, but i didn’t know it was called ducking to get that pulsing effect on the amplitude of other tracks until recently. Logic 10.6 has side chaining to make it easier for EDM producers.

 

The option has always been there, the issue is that the timing falls off as the project grows.

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How do professionals/famous producers deal with this? I do use ducking, automations etc. I never noticed this.

 

I said this a few times now here and there. This is a bug in Logic that will probably never get fixed otherwise it would be fixed by now. Mostly EDM producers experience this because they use these techniques. I have yet to experience this with my genre. It’s definitely not a problem for MODERN PRODUCTION, it’s a problem for a certain TYPE of music with LOGIC. Certain genres need a specific DAW. For EDM you maybe better off with Ableton?

 

Sidechaining has been used across the board in productions of all kinds since it was first thought up by Douglas Shearer in the 1930s as a way to tame sibilance in movie dialogue.

 

Great plugins like Trackspacer are rendered useless by it:

 

Can't be swept under the run as some EDM thing. Even if it were, electronic music type production is dominant in pretty much all mainstream music: pop, hip hop, much of country, latin, modern rock. Most of the music being consumed by the world. Logic has to step up and fix this.

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You have to work around it, bounce stuff to audio before you need to, commit to things before you need to, adjust your workflow from the start to avoid the inevitable issues that will come, make creative decisions that leave timing gaps for sharper automations to take place, etc.

 

In general you can't rely on accurate automation and sidechaining on your final busses by the end of a production. I've learned to never build my mixes off bus automation/sidechaining because at some point it'll all just break (I group everything as "drums" "music" "bass" "vocals" "fx" before the master. . . none of which have accurate automation/sidechain timing by the end of a production), and proceed with caution with other busses as they gradually break over the course of a session.

 

Its insane you can't automate and sidechain busses with proper timing once a session gets to a certain size. You build up a fine tuned mix that breaks 3/4 of the way to finish and you spend a day or more figuring out workarounds. I have to strongly reject any rationality for why that's ok.

 

Not sure how it doesn't happen to you, unless your sessions are more straightforward and you don't use plugins like Ozone, Soothe, Guilfoss, and other higher CPU plugs that seem to be the culprits in breaking everything. I'm not the science/engineer guy to explain why it happens I just know bam. . I've loaded one too many plugs and there goes my mix.

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How do professionals/famous producers deal with this? I do use ducking, automations etc. I never noticed this.

 

Not everyone needs tempo-synced rhythmic sidechaining, and not everyone does EDM.

 

Like most bugs in most software, you either hit it or you don't. For the people that hit that use-case regularly, bugs like this are a huge pain. For others, they don't even know it's there as it's simply not an issue for them.

 

There is a tendency I think for people to think most people out there are doing the same thing as them, or if they are using a DAW they must be dong EDM, which just isn't the case.

 

This bug is not an issue for me at all (to date) but it *is* a bad behaviour that should be fixed imo, I'm sure the devs are aware of it, but I'm equally sure that it's probably not a simple thing to fix and deep engine things like this are tricky to deal with, especially if they can potentially change the sound of existing projects....

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Not sure how it doesn't happen to you, unless your sessions are more straightforward and you don't use plugins like Ozone, Soothe, Guilfoss, and other higher CPU plugs that seem to be the culprits in breaking everything. I'm not the science/engineer guy to explain why it happens I just know bam. . I've loaded one too many plugs and there goes my mix.

 

If you're adding on extra high latency plugins like this on your master bus, I recommend you just mix in your project, and leave the pre-mastering or mastering to a second stage. Then you avoid all the pain with high latencies (which cause problems in recording MIDI and audio in time, and other things).

 

I know sometimes this is less convenient, but then so is working around latency issues that are seriously impacting your workflow, so while the issue is not fixed, you might find alternative workarounds that work better for you in the meantime...

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You have to work around it, bounce stuff to audio before you need to, commit to things before you need to, adjust your workflow from the start to avoid the inevitable issues that will come, make creative decisions that leave timing gaps for sharper automations to take place, etc.

 

In general you can't rely on accurate automation and sidechaining on your final busses by the end of a production. I've learned to never build my mixes off bus automation/sidechaining because at some point it'll all just break (I group everything as "drums" "music" "bass" "vocals" "fx" before the master. . . none of which have accurate automation/sidechain timing by the end of a production), and proceed with caution with other busses as they gradually break over the course of a session.

 

Its insane you can't automate and sidechain busses with proper timing once a session gets to a certain size. You build up a fine tuned mix that breaks 3/4 of the way to finish and you spend a day or more figuring out workarounds. I have to strongly reject any rationality for why that's ok.

 

Not sure how it doesn't happen to you, unless your sessions are more straightforward and you don't use plugins like Ozone, Soothe, Guilfoss, and other higher CPU plugs that seem to be the culprits in breaking everything. I'm not the science/engineer guy to explain why it happens I just know bam. . I've loaded one too many plugs and there goes my mix.

 

 

Wait, does it mess Automstions aswell? How?

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Yes mostly Logic native plugins used here and I don’t need automation and ducking that tight. (Like EDM and ‘dance country’ and other modern genres.

Mostly do volume automation, ducking of reverb and bass over a kick etc. I don’t need to use a third party plugin to automate an LFO on a bus down to the tick etc.

 

You have to work around it, bounce stuff to audio before you need to, commit to things before you need to, adjust your workflow from the start to avoid the inevitable issues that will come, make creative decisions that leave timing gaps for sharper automations to take place, etc.

 

In general you can't rely on accurate automation and sidechaining on your final busses by the end of a production. I've learned to never build my mixes off bus automation/sidechaining because at some point it'll all just break (I group everything as "drums" "music" "bass" "vocals" "fx" before the master. . . none of which have accurate automation/sidechain timing by the end of a production), and proceed with caution with other busses as they gradually break over the course of a session.

 

Its insane you can't automate and sidechain busses with proper timing once a session gets to a certain size. You build up a fine tuned mix that breaks 3/4 of the way to finish and you spend a day or more figuring out workarounds. I have to strongly reject any rationality for why that's ok.

 

Not sure how it doesn't happen to you, unless your sessions are more straightforward and you don't use plugins like Ozone, Soothe, Guilfoss, and other higher CPU plugs that seem to be the culprits in breaking everything. I'm not the science/engineer guy to explain why it happens I just know bam. . I've loaded one too many plugs and there goes my mix.

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You have to work around it, bounce stuff to audio before you need to, commit to things before you need to, adjust your workflow from the start to avoid the inevitable issues that will come, make creative decisions that leave timing gaps for sharper automations to take place, etc.

 

In general you can't rely on accurate automation and sidechaining on your final busses by the end of a production. I've learned to never build my mixes off bus automation/sidechaining because at some point it'll all just break (I group everything as "drums" "music" "bass" "vocals" "fx" before the master. . . none of which have accurate automation/sidechain timing by the end of a production), and proceed with caution with other busses as they gradually break over the course of a session.

 

Its insane you can't automate and sidechain busses with proper timing once a session gets to a certain size. You build up a fine tuned mix that breaks 3/4 of the way to finish and you spend a day or more figuring out workarounds. I have to strongly reject any rationality for why that's ok.

 

Not sure how it doesn't happen to you, unless your sessions are more straightforward and you don't use plugins like Ozone, Soothe, Guilfoss, and other higher CPU plugs that seem to be the culprits in breaking everything. I'm not the science/engineer guy to explain why it happens I just know bam. . I've loaded one too many plugs and there goes my mix.

 

 

Wait, does it mess Automstions aswell? How?

 

The timing. It affects me when I do stuff like automating a reverb wetness to increase for a section, and want it to snap back to where it was tightly at the 1 of the next bar, it'll be early or late. Same with delays, filters, saturation amounts, anything you automate to increase for momentum and space or whatever and then want to snap back precisely at the 1 of the next bar. Same with mute, if I want to mute the last two beats of the Drum Bus precisely, the mute will happen randomly sort of close to where I'm asking it to.

 

I like to do this with whole sections sometimes (IE the common disco filter effect), IE filter all the drums down and turn the verb up on the Drum Bus. . and simply can't unless I make it work where the drums drop out for a beat or two at the end of the section to give the poorly timed automation some room to do its thing before the 1 where I want it back to how it was.

 

Here's a quick shot of what I'm working on right now. You see the sharp automation on CF-LowTechSynth? That timing would be off on a bus.

 

Screen%20Shot%202021-04-11%20at%207.47.22%20PM.png?dl=0

Edited by JO'B
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Wait, does it mess Automstions aswell? How?

 

The timing. It affects me when I do stuff like automating a reverb wetness to increase for a section, and want it to snap back to where it was tightly at the 1 of the next bar, it'll be early or late. Same with delays, filters, saturation amounts, anything you automate to increase for momentum and space or whatever and then want to snap back precisely at the 1 of the next bar.

 

I like to do this with whole sections sometimes (IE the common disco filter effect), IE filter all the drums down and turn the verb up. . and simply can't unless I make it work where the drums drop out for a beat or two at the end of the section to give the poorly timed automation some room to do its thing before the 1 where I want it back to how it was.

 

I see. Hope they fix it for you. I don’t make this type of music but i do enjoy listening to this kind of music occasionally and i guess this technique has to be accurate. It is the opposite what i do. I need everything to not be on the grid so tightly to put more R’n’R mojo in songs lol.

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If so : please fix the latency compensation mess. Logic right now can't do midi controlled sidechaining, which almost EVERYONE uses in modern production on Ableton Live.

 

Logic can actually do it, but as soon as there's a plugin with LATENCY in ANY of your busses : you're screwed, sidechain will be out of sync. Got a reverb that induces latency ? you're screwed. Want to use a limiter with latency on your instrument bus ? you're screwed. This just makes Logic useless for this type of projects. Even using LFOTOOL on a track AFTER a plugin that has latency : it will be out of sync.

 

Ableton will latency compensate your craziest bus dreams, and allow you to do this trick without a hitch. I love Logic, but for modern production i can't stay on this boat.

 

As a 15 years user of Logic : please fix this !

 

Thanks

Can you post a simple project that shows this.

Just looking to see an actual project with this issue.

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Hold up. When does automations get messed up? When you route a track with heavy processing to a bus? or do some heavy processing on Bus and Sidechain something to that bus? I didn't realize this what causes it?

 

I'm not an under-the-hood person so I have no idea. At whatever point the sidechain timing becomes off, ALL the timing for everything on that bus becomes off.

 

Here's an old thread of mine about it: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=137436

 

And here's a clip from that thread where I'm doing the disco filter effect on drums with the automation set to return at the 1, and its misfiring. Instead of happening precisely at the 1 where I've set it to happen, it happens early, after the 4 of the previous measure: https://uc555428f2f81e04a127bb86f5e7.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/BMdRref6uDMUapAQtOhvFt-GlgqUb_CBUUN8wFJEFKP6URsyUpKIiG5aTUv7cNodOr3AdvUKUDkeBIB8tMtYMjfTgzANL6k8UxrdhjyjJXQnRkElFqT2gtpEHHAvYdZ3aRq4TP0c6xMlCGKetNsmmhFw/file#

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Another example from that same thread here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ymv5x5f66rkrqpq/img_5510.mov?dl=0

 

And when I reduced the session to just drums to send to David for help, that same automation worked fine: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/lhzk2y1x2x01ijj/img_5511.mov?dl=0

 

So basically I'll be working on a project and everything is working fine like in the 2nd clip here, and then bam, some line gets crossed, and everything breaks and things start working like the 1st clip here and I have to troubleshoot bouncing audio and stuff because basic automation no longer is in time.

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I found out that if you have some heavy processing on a bus, or you route an audio track with heavy processing to a bus, and you take that bus and route it to another bus, the final bus causes the Sidechain delay.

 

So the automations goes wrong only when you apply them on that final bus right?

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I found out that if you have some heavy processing on a bus, or you route an audio track with heavy processing to a bus, and you take that bus and route it to another bus, the final bus causes the Sidechain delay.

 

So the automations goes wrong only when you apply them on that final bus right?

 

It happens on busses yes, not individual tracks. I haven't paid enough attention to note whether it only happens when I've bussed twice, but that's something common, like grouping a set of guitar tracks to one bus where they're processed together, then bussing that to the main Music Bus with everything else. Or grouping set of vocals together for processing, and then bussing that to the main Vocal Bus.

 

My main busses are always worthless timing-wise by the end of a project, so if I want to automate parts of them I have to bounce to audio stems at the end and do it that way instead of just automating the bus. I'll have to make-shift my way through the project with stand-in bounces until the end.

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