The history of Apple's Logic Pro terrific digital audio workstation spans four decades. It first emerged from the combination of C-Lab Creator and Notator on the Atari ST in the late 1980s. Apple purchased the developer (then renamed Emagic) in 2002 and has overhauled the DAW multiple times since then, most notably in 2013 to a single-window design. Today, Logic Pro offers pro-level audio editing at a bargain price for multitrack recording, film scoring, sound design, and postproduction. New mastering tools make the latest version more compelling than ever, earning it our Editors' Choice award alongside the industry-standard Avid Pro Tools.
Logic Pro Setup and Interface Improvements
Apple Logic Pro 10.8 is free if you're upgrading. If you're a new customer, it costs a reasonable $199.99. You need a recent Mac running macOS Ventura 13.5 or later and 6GB of free space for the base program. It's pretty safe to say there will never be a PC version again, whereas all its major competitors work on PCs and Macs. To install everything, including all the packaged synths, instruments, loops, and effects, you need to set aside 72GB. As always, Logic Pro doesn't require hardware or software copy protection. Log into the Apple Store on any Mac, and you can download, install, and run it seamlessly.
For this updated review, I tested Logic Pro 10.8.1 on a MacBook Pro 16-inch (Late 2021, M1 Pro) running macOS Sonoma 14.2.1, a second-generation Focusrite Scarlett 6i6, a set of PreSonus Eris E8 XT studio monitors, and a Nektar GX61 MIDI keyboard controller. Logic Pro is optimized for Apple silicon, and if you have an older setup, the program can be set to "only load plug-ins needed for project playback" to conserve CPU power in larger projects. A single project supports 1,000 stereo audio tracks, 1,000 instrument tracks, and 1,000 auxiliary tracks, with up to 12 sends per channel strip.
Apple made another round of UI and audio engine improvements in the latest version. These include new Slip and Rotate tools that help you move around content inside regions (audio, sample, or instrument) without affecting the region boundaries. You can now record at 32 bits, giving you added flexibility in managing unwanted digital clipping when recording without bringing up the noise floor. Fans of the Drummer plug-in can now set default region types and add Drummer regions and pattern regions to software instrument tracks, letting you use different Drummers and patterns on the same track. Apple also added accessibility enhancements, such as letting the program announce the playhead position when recording, playing back, and scrubbing audio. Unfortunately, you still can’t do much with the color scheme.
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Master of Your Domain
The big news in version 10.8 is Mastering Assistant, which gets a special button on the console stereo bus. It brings up a real-time EQ visualizer and some controls and metering. It then immediately analyzes your track and configures its internal "plug-in chain" for the right processing.
The interface is well organized. On the top left, you can choose from four sonic presets: Clean, Transparent, Valve, and Punch, though older Intel Macs only offer the Clean preset. The left Auto EQ slider lets you blend in just some of the suggested curve instead of 100% of it, with a Custom EQ button on the bottom left. To the right, the all-important Dynamics section lets you dial in "loudness," complete with proper LUFS metering (Logic had this before, but it was in separate plug-ins). An Excite button lets you add some high-end energy to the mix. The Spread section enables you to widen the stereo image to your taste. A button for checking mono compatibility would have been helpful here. However, you get a Bypass that lets you compare the changes with the unmastered mix with loudness compensation to make sure you're comparing apples to apples (so to speak).
I've mastered using Logic Pro for clients, even though I have access to higher-end tools like Magix Sequoia, with its four-point audio editing, and dedicated packages like Izotope Ozone. What makes Mastering Assistant worthwhile, aside from its one-stop-shop design, is that it's doing the work for you. It's not just analyzing the average EQ curve but tweaking your existing mix to match it, at least as summed on the stereo bus (it's not going in and adjusting your track faders or anything, nor should it). Having this kind of power in the bundled plug-ins is a big leap.
I tested Mastering Assistant on an electro track and numerous singer-songwriter tracks, with and without backing bands. In all cases, Mastering Assistant tightened up the mixes and tweaked the EQ for a more polished sound, matching, in some instances, what I had done on my own. In one case, it further improved the drum and vocal sounds when I switched it to the Valve preset, taming some excess upper-midrange presence I was happy to hear smoothed out. In another case, I preferred my work, although it got close and offered some interesting sonic options with its four presets that would have quickly passed muster.
As is always the case in mastering, it's crucial to give Mastering Assistant a good mix. It really shouldn't change your track all that much. If it does, the mix may need more work; a particular instrument may be contributing to a nasty frequency bump, the arrangement could be too thick, or the kick drum may not mesh well enough with the bass guitar. Ultimately, hiring an experienced mastering engineer is always the best way to go because it's a fresh pair of ears that hasn't already heard your track 300 times in various states of completion, regardless of tools or techniques. Absent that, Mastering Assistant will get you most of the way there—making it a valuable addition to Logic Pro.
Sample Alchemy and Beat Breaker
Other new features come from Logic Pro's recent iPad offering, which I tested on its release last year. Sample Alchemy takes a single sample as input and turns it into an instrument using your choice of granular, additive, or spectral synthesis, up to four individual sound sources, and five playback options (Classic, Loop, Bow, Scrub, and Arp). Sample Alchemy doesn't support multisampling, but Logic already has Sampler. What it does offer is surprisingly deep and offers plenty of options for transforming and warping sounds. It comes with a smattering of pads, soundscapes, leads, and basses to give you an idea of what it can accomplish, many of which sounded good in testing.
The macOS version of Logic also gets Beat Breaker (above), a terrific effects plug-in that slices up audio and rearranges it in real-time. It features plenty of options for varying the speed, direction, and repetition, and it does an excellent job of producing vinyl scratch sounds and starting and stopping the audio as if it's been pressed to a record first. I immediately skipped the obvious drum-part stutter edits and tried applying it to a simple chord progression of some warm retro analog pads. I got all kinds of ideas and some terrible results that were easy to discard. And, of course, it's all nondestructive.
Instruments Galore
Two new sound packs are also on board (well, you have to download them from the Sound Library Manager): Hybrid Textures offers 70 instrument patches and 80 Apple Loops using Sample Alchemy, and Vox Melodics contains nearly 500 lyrical phrases, harmonies, and effects. Receiving new sonic material in successive versions is always welcome, as you can never have enough sounds to inspire you.
It's not like Logic Pro was lacking, though. Apple's instrument bundle is second to none among competing DAWs. Logic Pro stalwarts like the versatile Alchemy, Retro Synth, and Sampler instruments remain ready to help you produce just about any kind of music. Its Live Loops mode lets you compose non-linearly using columns of cells for arranging music in real-time into Scenes, in a nod to Ableton Live, complete with powerful remix tools for manipulating audio organically. Numerous Producer Packs include royalty-free sounds from famous producers such as Take a Daytrip, Mark Ronson, and Oak Felder, plus slap house and modern ambient sound packs.
Logic Pro comes with nearly 6,000 presets across 26 bundled instrument plug-ins and over 13,500 royalty-free loops. Few of the bundled built-in acoustic instrument sounds rival high-end third-party sample libraries from Spitfire Audio or East West, and buying a big package of plug-ins like Native Instruments Komplete will take your sound quality to another level. But Logic Pro gives you a vast collection, and just about any analog or digital synth sounds you can think of are in reach using the bundled instruments.
Some fiddly bits in the day-to-day composition workflow remain, though. Using a lot of Logic's excellent instrument patches results in a cluttered project full of extraneous aux buses. The program combines reverb buses when possible, but you still end up with 10 or more in every new project pretty quickly. Clicking on Enable Patch Merging and disabling Sends stops this behavior, but you must do that for every project.
Audio Editing and Film Scoring
Logic Pro’s audio editing tools remain comprehensive if best-in-class. To call out just a few favorites: Flex Pitch and Flex Time can quickly tune vocals and fix mistakes in recorded audio tracks. Flex Pitch, in particular, remains a great freebie if you're used to working with an entirely separate app, such as Melodyne. I've used it extensively at this point. Some engineers prefer the sound of Melodyne, but with careful edits, you can get transparent results here, and I love not having to export and re-import tuned vocals each time. Region Gain is somewhat similar to Clip Gain, one of my favorite features in Pro Tools. It makes it simple to adjust a region without resorting to automation or a destructive edit. However, it requires a few more clicks than Pro Tools does.
You can write automation to regions, which makes it much simpler to move around and arrange your project without losing recorded fader and knob movements. Fades are generated in real time rather than stored as separate audio files. And you can apply fades to multiple regions simultaneously, aiding in sound design and other post-production tasks.
Logic supports scoring for video, of course, and it works quite well for that purpose. It features comprehensive support for many video formats, plenty of video-specific tools, and the aforementioned massive bundled instrument and sample library. But anyone working in episodic television or film may have encountered a couple of frustrating limitations: You can load only one video cue into each session, and you can't lock tempo events to SMPTE timecode. (SMPTE refers to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and SMPTE timecode is a widely used standard for labeling individual film or video frames on a timeline.)
Sometimes, one cue requires multiple tempos, so using separate Logic sessions for each cue doesn't always work. And if you're using Beat Mapping and need to adjust one section's tempo to accommodate a director's change, and that section comes before an event fixed to a frame, it throws the entire cue off. You can SMPTE-lock music regions to a frame, but the cue will no longer relate to the metronome, and other sections you're not working on will lose their initial positions. Digital Performer—with its support for multiple videos per project, ability to separate cues into Chunks, and comprehensive cue and revision management—is more suited for the task.
Mixing and Effects
The main mix console offers faders, panning, 256 busses, and as many inserts and sends as you need. A true stereo panning option lets you adjust the individual left and right levels instead of just attenuating either the left or right signal. The mixer’s 64-bit summing engine sounds excellent, and analog-style VCA faders are also available. More flexible channel-strip sizing and placement would also be welcome. Another quirk: To rearrange auxiliary buses, you have to enable automation to create lanes for them in the Track view and then move them around there, which is clumsy and clutters up the UI.
Logic's plug-in package includes two excellent reverbs—the algorithmic ChromaVerb and the convolution Space Designer—plus a stereo Compressor with terrific VCA (transparent solid-state), FET, and Opto (tube-like) modes that behave differently and provide precisely the kind of warmth and crunch you'd expect from actual vintage hardware. Numerous EQ plug-ins are on board, including parametric, tube, and linear phase for mastering. DeEsser 2 helps minimize sibilance on vocal tracks more transparently than the original DeEsser. Logic's Spatial Audio support and Dolby Atmos integration let you output finished tracks that play natively in Apple Music. Using the 3D Object Panner, you can create mixes with elevation control, moving objects around and above you in the soundscape.
The new Mastering Assistant is excellent, but I'd like an improved Multipressor for track use. Logic's venerable multiband compressor still sounds like it did 15 years ago to my ear and could use more punch in the low end and definition in the highs. The console's meters and channel strips are smaller than what you get in Pro Tools, Cubase, and other DAWs. Logic Remote for iOS has larger ones, but you can only see eight at once. And inexplicably, you still can’t change the default folders for your projects and bounces, which is problematic on Macs with small internal SSDs.
Still the Logical Choice
Plenty of quality DAWs are on the market these days, but Logic Pro is one of the best options available for Mac users—thanks in large part to its terrific updates over the years. Simply put, Logic Pro is a stellar composition, recording, and mixing environment at a jaw-dropping price, earning it our Editors' Choice award. It also makes the ideal upgrade from GarageBand. PC users should look at Avid Pro Tools, our Editors' Choice on PCs and still the standard in professional recording studios across the country.
Apple Logic Pro powers up its mastering chops in version 10.8 while retaining its core excellence, for another stellar update to a best-in-class digital audio workstation.
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