Apple today continued its push to blur the line between ‘pro’ and consumer apps, releasing Logic Pro 9 in its Mac App Store for $199.99. The company also is killing off Logic Express and its Logic Studio bundle, and selling MainStage as a download for $29.99.
Pricing a leading DAW at about $200 is sure to give other vendors some grief. It wasn’t that long ago that the major DAW’s were priced well over $500. At $200, it’s priced below a lot of virtual instruments, too.
I’ll be interested to see how the App Store process works with a monster DAW like Logic Pro. The app itself is over 400MB, and with all the optional content, the download is pushing 20GB. If you give this a try, let us know how it works for you.
Details on the Logic Pro 9 below.
Logic Pro 9 Features:
- Production-ready templates and one-step track setup
- Enhance your songs with over 15,000 Apple Loops in a wide range of instruments and genres
- 40 built-in instruments including synths, vintage keyboards, a drum machine, sampler, and more
- 80 effects including reverbs, delays, EQs, dynamics, amps, stompboxes, and more
- Over 1700 sampled instruments for a rich variety of acoustic and electronic sounds
- 4500 professionally crafted settings to fuel your creativityCreate your own sampler instruments instantly from any audio in your project
- Produce lead sheets or fully ornamented scores using a comprehensive set of notation tools
- Advanced music-for-picture featuresRecord and seamlessly punch in and out of one or multiple tracksDocument important details from musicians to microphones with Project and Track notes
- Use Beat Mapping to record without a click track and then conform to bars and beats later
- Manipulate the timing and tempo of any recording with ease using Flex Time features
- Build comps by selecting the best parts of each take using Quick Swipe Comping
- Correct the timing of audio recordings as easily as you do with MIDI using Audio Quantize
- Quickly render effects for a single region or an entire track using Bounce-in-Place
- Replace or double less-than-perfect drum tracks with just a few clicks using Drum ReplacerVarispeed makes it simple to slow down or speed up an entire multitrack project
- Create huge projects using up to 255 audio, software instrument, and auxiliary channels
- Use up to 15 plug-in inserts and 8 sends per channel
- Record, edit, and mix your projects in full surround, with up to 7.1 channels
- Use up to 32 Track Groups to more easily control multiple drum, vocal, or other related tracks
- Open GarageBand projects directly in Logic Pro
- 64-bit support facilitates more RAM access for big projects and massive sampler instruments
- Multicore audio engine automatically distributes processing across all cores in your Mac
System Requirements: 2GB of RAM (4GB recommended), display with 1280-by-768 resolution or higher, minimum 3.6GB of disk space. 19GB of optional content available via in-app download.
Odd, I was reading about this on Gearslutz this morning, looking for whatever I could dig up on Logic X or Logic 10 and the conversation became one about how the hell Apple was going to release an entire DAW over the App Store.
Regarding the news itself, it’s a shame that they released Mainstage without it being fully rewire compatible. If it was capable of being a rewire slave and not just a host; I’d of bought it right this second. Shame.
ok wheres my rebate apple? and its about time they sold mainstage as a separate piece of software
Overnight download I guess (or maybe a couple of hours if you have a good connection.)
I’m liking MainStage for $30, though I also agree it would be super-awesome with ReWire support – do any music apps in the Mac App Store support ReWire? Is it even possible?
OK, so we’re one step closer to an iPad version, right? 😀
Good news indeed.
I like the price reduction because I seem to spend several times that amount on 3rd party instruments and effects!
I guess after the app release of Final Cut X that was only a question of time. Yet I wonder what has happened to Apple’s Impulse Response Ultility and Soundtrack Pro.
I’m Ableton Live user, but since I do not know any relevant competition to the IR Utility, that would be a sure purchase for me if it was also sold as a seperate product. After all, I have to get impulse responses for Native Instruments Reflektor from somewhere 😉
I would prefer buying future Logic Pro versions with real box, cds and manuals. Logic Pro v9 is a massive product and to download it would need a fast connection will take alot of time and bandwidth and I would have to visit an internet cafe to download it because it would eat up all my internet bandwidth.
you get all Logic-Plugins for 29$ (included in Mainstage!)
20GB of content!!!
you can then use the whole plug-in collection in Ableton 😀
This is the thing you should start downloading at night, and see if it’s done in the morning.
The price reduction is awesome, and way worth the time downloading vs an expensive boxed version.
Apple’s website says Mainstage supports ReWire, is it only partial support or something?
Anyway, I bought MS2 it last night. It was a ~300 MB download, then when you first run it, it has to go download about 2 GB of “basic content” before you can use it — that took about an hour or so.
After that, you can download the rest of the content ala carte from inside the app, so you don’t need to download one big huge 20 GB download… just download what you need when it is convenient for you.
So far, for $30, I’m loving it.
It only supports Rewire as a host, not as a slave, ie you can’t send midi out to it nor can you use it to send audio back into live, it has to be the master output. Great if you want to use them as master EQs or filters or whatnot but sucks for everything else. Apple was only telling half the truth when it said Mainstage supported Rewire.
@stellan0r: Unless something’s changed, you *can’t* use Logic/Mainstage plug-ins in other hosts. They aren’t technically plug-ins, as far as I know. They’re built into the apps themselves.
So you have to pay again for the contents ?
No.
I’ve been downloading this App for 4 days now. I’ve gone past my usage in which any internet use is slowed down extremely, I think snails move faster climbing up a wall. May take my mac to the school campus this week and use their wifi. It’s so frustrating. Also my app cost $209 in Australia, must be a US rate that’s $199.
Downloaded main app (400Mb) in 1.5hrs (at night).
Essential audio content (2Gb) in 2hrs.
Additional audio content (4Gb) in 4hrs.
Not bothering with the 10Gb of Jam Pack samples and instruments. Personally I’ve never used it, I’ve got my own samples and instruments collected over the years.
Pretty happy with the price drop overall and app store. Means I can have it on my laptop and work station at the same time 🙂
Harvey Norman currently have iTunes gift vouchers on sale. A $40 voucher costs $30. In other words I just paid $150 for logic pro. Even better!
If you are dead set on logic pro 9 then you can just go to your local apple store to download it.
I went to mine to see if I could get it on a cd but they said to download it there 🙂
Hope it helps
Sometime into my 2nd day of the download, I noticed that the download may stop if I’ve exited the app (Logic), even tho a pop-up asks me ” would you like to continue the download?” even with the app closed. So, now I’ve created (saved/started) a new song to keep the app open. The download restarts (the progress bars start rolling) the moment the app loads.
Can anyone provide me with any kind of contact info of an experienced Logic Pro user who can answer some basic questions that are not covered in any advertising materials. Or, if you are one and willing to spend 5 minutes with me on the phone, send me an email with a number and a time to call. [email protected]