Logic Control and Logic
Control XT
A new control surface for
Logic Audio 5.0 and above
This article is dated. Here is a
new page on the subject
It's about Control, for
the Freak in you!
by Rich the TweakMeister
Note: Logic Control
is was developed by Emagic and eventually formed the basis for Mackie Control,
which is functionally the same. You can install mackie Control software
on Logic Control and Vice Versa.
Emagic writes: The Logic
Control hardware units provide quick and easy operation of your Logic System.
The Logic Control units are the ultimate tools for turning your existing
studio space into a professional working environment. The Logic Control
hardware is, quite plainly, a revolution for anybody who wants to streamline
their workflow with the Logic family of music production software.
Tweak: That's the blurb from
Emagic. Now I'm going to tell you of the dream behind all this.
First
I want to take you to Digidesign's site. Let's look at some ProTools
automation systems, one's that many of us will never, ever be able to afford.
Go ahead, click this url:
http://www.digidesign.com/products/mix/
and here's some
digidesign control surfaces with their prices. But don't
let those prices fool you. To get that 12 grand Pro control to work
your going to need a lot more stuff, your cost will be way over that
by the time you are done. Now it should be coming clear. The
dream is to get this kind of moving faders, 100% flexible total automation
control on a dedicated surface that allows it to be created, manipulated,
and recorded. Logic Control costs around 1/10th of what a ProControl
would cost, and, unlike DD's stuff, the Logic Control blends in easily with
your existing studio.
Logic Control, for now, only works with
Logic Audio 5. You can't use it with Cubase or Sonar, or with previous
versions of Logic. Yes, the faders have motors under them.
They move. The way you work with an automated fader, for those of
you who have never played with one, is that as soon as you touch it, it
starts writing data to the track and can be set to overwrite any data already
there. So if you botch a fader movement just go over it again and
grab the fader at the appropriate time to make it go where you want it to
go. The faders are touch sensitive. They know when you are touching
them and when you are not from the electricity on your fingers.
By
hitting some buttons, you can define which parameters the faders and V-pots
are controlling. You can control 8 EXS parameters with the faders
just as easily as you can control volume. And don't think you are
limited to 8 tracks because there are only 8 faders. By hitting a
single button you can jump to the next bank of 8 tracks, and so on.
Logic control can control as many tracks as you have in your Logic song.
Of course, some of you are going to want to have more than 8 faders and
8 v-pots available at once, so Emagic has made the Logic XT version.
This adds another 8 faders and v-pots. You can add multiple XT's if
you want. Each unit will take up a full MIDI port (all 16 channels),
so if there is one thing you may need to check before you get a LC,
it is whether you have enough MIDI ports. Emagic recommends using
it's own interfaces for Logic Control. I advise you trust that.
LC will work on any MIDI port, but personally, I would not try it on a spare
soundcard port.
Logic Control is not an audio interface.
It is a 100% MIDI controller that controls the operation of Logic Audio
and your audio interface. The audio is still going in and coming out
of your audio interface/soundcard. All the dramatic things that can
be done to the sound are done in Logic's virtual mixer. It's important
to understand that Logic control is NOT an audio mixer. You cannot
connect audio cables to it. However, Logic Control works "inside"
your audio interface and can route inputs to outputs, through virtual sends
and returns in Logic's mixer, through the plugins, sidechains, s/pdif outs--whatever
you have defined there. If you have a mixer, Logic control will work
along side of it. If you have an audio interface well endowed with
pre amps and inputs, Logic Control will alleviate the need to buy a separate
mixer. For myself, I still use my Mackie 1402 as the front end of
my audio interface and Alesis studio 32 for my large arsenal of MIDI synths.
I route the Alesis through one of my Delta 1010's input pairs which are
represented as one Logic's Audio Input Pairs in the environment. This
lets me control the audio coming out of the Alesis with Logic's mixer, and
therefore Logic Control. This way, i can balance all the MIDI tracks
with all the audio tracks and audio instruments all on one surface.
This is just one way to use it that suits me. You might find other
ways to interface it with your gear. If you are running a software only
studio, for example, Logic control might be the only external device you
need other than your audio interface and keyboard.
To be continued...
