Apple Logic Pro 10.7

Could a small step for Logic Pro’s version number represent a giant leap for music production?

Modesty isn’t always a quality we associate with Apple. But in recent years, new versions of Logic Pro have been quietly released as free incremental upgrades, when in fact they introduce major new features. This was never more true than with the new Logic Pro 10.7. As ever, the full list of enhancements is vast, and includes innumerable detailed tweaks and bug‑fixes, but the main focus is clear. Logic Pro 10.7 is about immersive audio, and specifically Dolby Atmos.

This, obviously, is part of a wider strategic plan on Apple’s part. Atmos has been pushed front and centre in the Apple Music ecosystem, and launch publicity for the recent M1 Max and M1 Pro processors has likewise highlighted music applications to an unprecedented extent. And it has the potential to be a game‑changer for everyone, not least because 10.7 is once again a free update for existing users.

Goes From 11

Logic Pro 10.7 is, of course, still Mac‑only, and requires Mac OS 11 ‘Big Sur’ or Mac OS 12 ‘Monterey’. It’s still compatible with older Intel machines, as long as they can run these operating systems, but includes many under‑the‑hood optimisations for the new generation of M1 chips. A subtle visual refresh brings the GUI more in line with the look and feel of current Mac OS versions, but won’t cause alarm or confusion among existing users.

Taking advantage of its new spatial audio features is remarkably simple, but it’s a good idea to do a little bit of housekeeping first. Assuming you also want to retain a stereo version of your project, it’s probably best to work either in a duplicate copy, or in a Project Alternative, rather than rely on a stereo downmix from the Atmos version. Once you’re ready to go, you can either visit the Project Settings and choose Dolby Atmos from the Spatial Audio pop‑up, or select the new Dolby Atmos item in the Mix menu — and that’s all you need to do!

The sheer effortlessness of this is pretty remarkable when you think about what’s going on under the hood. What’s apparent to the user is that a new Atmos plug‑in is inserted on the master bus, and surround panners are activated on every channel. What you don’t see is that Logic Pro is taking care of routing, sample rate management and buffer size adjustment in the background. Atmos itself demands a sample rate of 48 or 96 kHz, with buffer sizes of 512 or 1024 samples respectively. For best results, it’s probably desirable to apply offline sample‑rate conversion to audio that’s at 44.1kHz before you get stuck in, but if you don’t, there’s no need to worry: Logic Pro will convert for you on the fly during playback.

If at this point you hit the space bar to find out what your newly minted Atmos project sounds like, you might be in for a surprise. That’s because the Atmos plug‑in doesn’t only handle routing and panning: it is also a monitor controller, and defaults to assuming you have a surround playback system. Reconfiguring this is done through a simple pop‑up menu, which includes both 2.0 (so that you can hear how your mix will sound folded down to stereo) and binaural as well as 5.1, 7.1, 5.1.4 and 7.1.4. This obviously doesn’t cover all possibilities, but should be fine for most setups. For mixing on headphones, you’d choose binaural, but note that this setting uses Dolby’s binaural encoder rather than the one through which Apple Music audiences will be hearing your music. More on this later.

Apple clearly want to encourage us to think in immersive audio terms during the music creation process as well.

Dolby Atmos: Making Beds

A Dolby Atmos mix can contain up to 128 channels, divided between two types of audio stream: beds and objects. Beds are conventional channel‑based surround streams containing up to 10 individual channels (organised as 7.1.2), while objects are mono or stereo streams that are packaged with metadata. This metadata tells the playback device how each object should be positioned and moved around whatever speakers are available. (For more on Atmos and immersive audio in general, see last month’s cover feature.) The Atmos standard itself permits multiple beds, but Logic Pro’s implementation only supports a single bed. This is unlikely to be an issue for music mixing: you’d typically need multiple beds only if you were working in post‑production and having to combine music, dialogue and sound effects.

If you click the Output pop‑up on any channel, you’ll see an additional option called 3D Object Panner. Selecting this causes the channel to be converted to an object. Its output is no longer folded into the Atmos bed, but sent discretely to the Atmos plug‑in along with the panning data from the Object Panner. And the beauty of this is that no matter how many times you change your mind about which channels should be objects and which should be part of the bed, Logic handles all of the routing completely invisibly in the background.

In some applications, the same surround panner is used for both bed and object tracks. This has obvious benefits in terms of consistency, but it typically makes the panner itself relatively complex. Apple have taken a different approach, whereby channels that are routed to the bed feature an updated version of the existing Surround Panner, while bed tracks get the entirely new Object Panner.

To take advantage of the height capabilities in Atmos, the Surround Panner can be operated in Planar or Spherical modes. In Planar mode, it acts as a familiar 2D panner: if you want to add height to your source, you need to adjust the Elevation parameter separately. In Spherical mode, by contrast, dragging the pan position in towards the centre of the circle increases elevation automatically. So, if you were to pan dead centre in Spherical mode, the source would appear to be above your head, whereas in Planar mode it would be inside your head, as it were.

Two different surround panners are used in an Atmos project. Anything routed to the Atmos bed gets the conventional Surround Panner (left), but objects have their own Object Panner (right).

By contrast, the Object Panner represents the 3D soundfield as a half‑cube rather than a hemisphere, and provides separate X‑Y and X‑Z panning grids. Again, the left‑right, front‑back and Elevation parameters can also be adjusted directly, as can the Size and Spread of the object. It’s all about as intuitive and user‑friendly as surround panning ever gets. One non‑obvious difference between bed and object tracks is that Independent Panning for sends is available only for the former, but this makes sense, because otherwise the send would have to be an object in its own right.

Plugging The Gaps

The Atmos plug‑in itself is a streamlined version of the Dolby Atmos Renderer used in or with other DAWs. You can watch your sources flying around in a ‘head in a box’ display, with which I think we are all going to become very familiar, and an optional text display lists the objects in your Project, plus all the channels used in the surround bed. Each of these, apart from the LFE channel, can be assigned a Binaural Render flag indicating that it should be treated as Near, Mid or Far when monitoring on headphones. The effects of these settings are often fairly subtle but they are certainly audible — in Logic Pro. Unfortunately, these flags are currently ignored by the binaural renderer used in Apple Music, which means that the mix you audition in Logic Pro might not sound the same when it’s rendered and distributed. There’s presently no way to audition in real time through Apple’s binaural encoder.

One thing that’s crucial to understand is that there is no ‘master bus’ as such in an Atmos mix, and hence no scope for using master bus processing as you might in a stereo environment. Any plug‑ins inserted before the Atmos plug‑in on the master bus affect only the bed channels, whilst plug‑ins placed after it don’t affect the sound at all — though these slots might still be useful for metering plug‑ins, for example.

Talking of plug‑ins, 13 Logic Pro favourites have been now updated for 7.1.4 surround use. The most important of these is probably the Space Designer convolution reverb, which now has an impressive library of Ambisonic surround IRs.

Talking of plug‑ins, 13 Logic Pro favourites have been now updated for 7.1.4 surround use. The most important of these is probably the Space Designer convolution reverb, which now has an impressive library of Ambisonic surround IRs. The surround version of the Tremolo plug‑in is interesting, as the multichannel modulation can create movement within and around the surround space. Also joining the ranks of the surround‑ready are the Limiter, Match EQ, Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Micro Phaser, Mod Delay, Level Meter and Tuner. There’s also a multichannel Gain plug‑in, and the all‑important Loudness Meter; Atmos is a loudness‑normalised standard so it’s vital your mixes don’t exceed ‑18LUFS. Other plug‑ins such as Chromaverb can operate in multi‑mono mode, in the same way that plug‑ins can be set up in dual‑mono mode on stereo tracks to process the left and right channels independently. Rather than have every speaker treated to its own reverb setting, the user can set groups for the speakers — for example, the left, centre and right speakers would normally use the same reverb setting, whereas you may want something darker and with more pre‑delay in the rear channels.

Steps Will Be Taken

In earlier versions of Logic Pro, the main way to edit MIDI data was using the Piano Roll view or in the Event List. Today there are alternative ways to handle both audio and MIDI data, including the seemingly old‑school Step Sequencer introduced in v10.5. Initially this worked pretty much like a classic drum grid sequencer where clicking in the squares activated whatever sound (usually a drum voice) was assigned to that row.

In Logic Pro 10.7, the Step Sequencer has evolved quite considerably, extending its usefulness beyond creating drum patterns. It now includes a Live Record mode, making it possible to record parts directly into the step sequencer from MIDI drum pads or a keyboard. A new Live Record button in the top right‑hand section of the window activates this mode, after which you just need to put the sequence into Play and start recording. Notes can also be entered in real time by using the keyboard cursor keys to navigate to the correct row and then using the apostrophe key to enter a note. There are record options that encompass Transpose, Quantize, Velocity and Note Length plus the addition of key, transpose and scale quantise features similar to those already found in the Piano Roll quantise editor. There are also some randomise options for when you run out of ideas.

Automation relating to plug‑ins can now be recorded directly into the step sequencer in Live Record mode. Initially the automation appears in sequencer‑like steps to match the sequencer grid, but the Automation Latch mode can be switched to Slide mode to smooth out the transitions if preferred. Rows can now be renamed and you can save Sequencer setups as custom pattern templates, which is useful when using third‑party drum kits or kits you’ve created yourself.

The Step Sequencer has evolved quite considerably... It now includes a Live Record mode, making it possible to record parts directly into the step sequencer from MIDI drum pads or a keyboard.

Another significant addition to the Step Sequencer is a pitched mode. Originally, changing the pitch of a drum note would simply change the MIDI note and therefore select a different drum voice, but now it can be used to retune individual hits. In this mode the expanded grid rectangles operate as stepped pitch faders working in semitones. The resulting part can also be used with the new scale quantise and transpose options, making it easy to set up melodies using tuned percussion. You can also sequence melodic parts, such as bass lines, and this time around both Mono and Legato modes have been added so that you can avoid overlapping notes. Notes may also be extended to occupy two or more slots. When mono mode is on and you enter a new note on a step that already contains a note, the old note will be deleted so your new note is the only note on that step.

Originally you could convert pattern regions to MIDI regions, but now you can also go the other way and convert a MIDI region into a sequencer pattern region to work on. This allows you to move between the Piano Roll editor and Step Sequencer pattern view as appropriate. Even unquantised MIDI parts can be converted to sequencer patterns — they’ll appear quantised to the sequencer grid but will include timing offsets so that their original timing is not changed. (Note that if converting a MIDI region to a sequencer pattern, the region must not be longer than 64 pattern steps, otherwise it will be greyed out. If you need to work on longer sections, simply divide long regions into manageable region lengths.)

In The Round

Hand in hand with the improvements to the Step Sequencer comes a huge amount of new sample and loop content. Select New from Template when you create a project and you’ll find several templates from producers such as Mark Ronson and Tom Misch, each of which comes with a set of curated Apple Loops, custom instrument and drum machine patches in both modern and vintage styles. Although I haven’t counted them myself, there are apparently 2800 new loops, 120 new instrument patches and 50 new drum kits including plenty of 808 material in there to keep the EDM fraternity happy. Open up one of the Producer Packs in the Loop view and you’ll see the current Producer Pack loops arranged in a song‑like fashion — and they can all be used free of copyright in your own compositions. To help keep things organised, the Loop browser filter now includes the Producer Pack names as well as Logic’s usual loop categories. You’ll also find that when choosing a new instrument from the Instrument browser, there’s a similar filter for homing in on the sounds from a particular Producer Pack.

Where this gets really interesting, though, is in the intersection between Live Loops and the new Atmos features. Load up the Spatial Audio Demo Grid template, fire off a few cells at random, and you’ll hear sounds moving around you in surround. That’s because surround pan automation can be applied to regions as well as tracks — and is retained when those regions are converted to Live Loops. This opens up the possibility of composing loop‑based projects in Atmos from the off. And that, I think, is the key to understanding Apple’s approach to spatial audio in Logic Pro 10.7.

Live Loops can contain Atmos pan automation, making it possible to carry out loop‑based composition in surround from the off.

It’s an immense challenge to achieve widespread uptake of a new format for music listening. Apple are probably the only company in the world who might be able to do so, and this is partly because they have a stake in every stage of the process. They see Atmos as an incentive for people to buy AirPods and subscribe to Apple Music; but they recognise that this will only work if there is a good range of really great Atmos content available within Apple Music. And, logically enough, they figure the best way to achieve this is to make the process of creating Atmos music as open and democratic as possible.

Logic Pro 10.7 is the linchpin of this strategy, and does several things that could be seen as game‑changing. For one thing, it makes available the tools needed to produce Atmos music at an unprecedented low cost. Previously, if you wanted to do an Atmos mix, you needed a high‑end workstation such as Nuendo, or a separate suite of software tools from Dolby; Pro Tools users, for example, would have to upgrade to Pro Tools Ultimate and pay for the Dolby Atmos Production Suite on top. The Suite in itself is slightly more expensive than a full Logic Pro 10.7 licence, so unless you need advanced features such as multiple beds, you could view a Logic Pro licence as a way of getting Atmos functionality with a DAW thrown in! And, of course, if you’re already a Logic Pro owner, you get all of this for free.

You could view a Logic Pro licence as a way of getting Atmos functionality with a DAW thrown in.

The implementation of Atmos in Logic Pro is also unique and, arguably, revolutionary in its own right. Stripping away some of the more specialised or post‑specific functionality has allowed Apple to simplify everything. If you’ve been put off experimenting with surround because it just all seems so complicated and difficult, this is the DAW for you. Your stereo projects are converted to Atmos at a single click and within minutes you’ll be flying objects around the room, losing the listener in surround reverbs and generally having a ball. Creating an Atmos mix that actually works well and doesn’t just sound like a stereo mix with some artificial widening is still a stiff challenge, but that’s the nature of the beast. Apple have done a sterling job of removing the obstacles that prevent people from mixing in surround.

But what’s really new about the Atmos implementation in 10.7 is that it’s not just about mixing. Until now, Atmos has been a post‑production rather than a production format. Music has been created in stereo and only Atmos‑ified as an afterthought, or as the last step in the process. As the new Live Loops show, Apple clearly want to encourage us to think in immersive audio terms during the music creation process as well. There are still a few obstacles standing in the path of making music that’s spatial from the very start — that fixed latency for an Atmos project for example — but it will be fascinating to see, and hear, how music producers take this idea and run with it.