Apple Logic Express 8 [OLD VERSION]

by Apple

Product Features

• Next-generation interface, featuring a streamlined, single-window workspace
• Simplified setup, with professional templates for common activities and projects
• Effortless multitake recording, including automatically generated take folders
• Revolutionary Quick Swipe comping, for quickly building the perfect track
• Powerful audio editing, including sample-accurate editing in the Arrange window

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B000VY7HV0
• Item model number: MA806LL/A
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 12, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,125 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #58 in Software > Video & Music > Software
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com

Logic Express 8 gives musicians everything they need to write, record, edit, and mix. It delivers the same innovative production tools as Logic Pro 8, including full notation, 24-bit/192kHz resolution, and Quick Swipe comping. A beautifully redesigned interface consolidates all windows into a single, efficient workspace made for musicians. Make music right out of the box with 36 instrument plug-ins from Logic Studio, including Ultrabeat drum machine, EXS24 Sampler, and ES2 synth. Shape music productions with 70 effect plug-ins from Logic Studio, including Guitar Amp Pro, Ringshifter, and full-featured Pitch Correction.

Logic Express 8 offers the same innovative production tools and redesigned interface as Logic Pro 8, along with more than 100 instruments and effects from Logic Studio. Download the product overview

Logic Express 8. Powerful music creation.
Logic Express 8 delivers the power, precision, and professional toolset of Logic Pro 8--including a redesigned interface that allows musicians to write, record, edit, and mix with unparalleled speed and ease. Logic Express includes all the functionality of Logic Pro 8 except for four high-end professional features--surround, TDM/DAE support, distributed audio processing (DAP), and support for high-end control surfaces.

Logic Express 8 comes with an expanded collection of professional instrument and effect plug-ins from Logic Studio, as well as channel strip settings and plug-in settings that allow you to begin making music immediately with professionally designed sounds. Logic Express is the ideal application for professional musicians and producers who want to get into the world of Logic for $199, as well as GarageBand users who are ready to take their music to the next level.

A World of Options
Logic Express puts a world of creative options at your fingertips, thanks to an open architecture that lets you use a wide range of audio interfaces and many different control surfaces. You can also explore hundreds of third-party Audio Units instruments and effects and incorporate sounds from third-party applications such as Ableton Live and Propellerhead Reason. Logic Express lets you work anywhere at any time, without proprietary hardware. When inspiration strikes, all you need is Logic Express and a Mac to capture your ideas and turn them into music—at home, on the road, or in the studio.

New in Logic Express 8
Logic Express 8, Apple's professional music production application, provides musicians with the powerful, easy-to-use tools they need to write, record, edit, and mix. It features an interface that has been redesigned for fast, intuitive control, with all the key functions organized in a unified workspace. Time-saving recording and editing tools make Logic Express 8 perfectly suited for everything from a scratch recording to a symphonic 24-channel recording.

Includes 36 instruments and 70 effects from Logic Studio.

New features in Logic Express 8 include:

• Next-Generation Interface
  A new workspace features a single-window design with retractable panes, customizable toolbar, shortcut menus, built-in browsers, and dual channel strips. This streamlined layout eliminates clutter and lets you focus on your music.
  
  
• Simplified Setup
  Logic Express 8 lets you start making music right away, with production-ready templates, one-step track setup, dynamic channel strip creation, and seamless integration of ReWire-compatible applications such as Ableton Live and Propellerhead Reason.
  
  
• Effortless Multitake Recording
  Logic Express 8 offers a simple, flexible approach to multitake recording. When you record over existing material, your takes are automatically stored in a take folder. Expand your take folder at any time to see a graphical display of all your takes for easy auditioning and editing. You can move a take folder anywhere in your arrangement and edit it just as you would any other region.
  
  
• Revolutionary Quick Swipe Comping
  Quick Swipe comping dramatically streamlines the process of comping tracks. Rather than cutting, moving, and muting regions, all you have to do is click and drag to select the best sections of each take. This creates a perfectly seamless comp, complete with transition-smoothing crossfades.
  
  
• Powerful Audio Editing Features
  New editing features in the Arrange window allow you to work with greater speed and precision, without opening separate windows.
  
  
• Network-Based Save and ShareBack up personal channel strip settings, plug-in settings, and key commands to your .Mac account for easy access from any computer connected to the Internet.2 You can also select favorite settings to share across a local or Internet-based network or through your .Mac Public folder.
  
  
• New Instruments from Logic Studio
  Logic Express 8 features 36 high-quality software instruments—including Ultrabeat, ES1, ES2, EXS24 Sampler, and more than a dozen GarageBand instruments.
  
  
• New Effects from Logic Studio
  With more than 70 professional effects, Logic Express gives you a rich palette of options for creating unique sounds—including a number of high-quality effect plug-ins from Logic Studio.

Built-in media browsers give you intuitive, rapid access to your content without opening additional windows or leaving the workspace.

Logic Pro 8 offers a simple, flexible approach to multitake recording.

Logic Express represents the gold standard for creating and editing MIDI-based music.

Additional Features in Logic Express 8
Logic Express 8 is a sophisticated, full-featured audio and MIDI application that provides all the tools you need to create professional-quality music productions. It allows you to record and edit audio and MIDI, add high-quality effects, and mix your music. The final mix can be exported to one or more standard audio files or burned to an audio CD. Logic Express 8 offers a broad and deep feature set in a redesigned single-window workspace.

Key features include:

• Ultimate Writing Studio
  A professional collection of music creation and writing tools makes it easy to capture and develop your musical inspirations. Record multiple takes, quickly assemble the perfect comp, establish a groove with a selection of Apple Loops, and fill out the remaining parts in your composition with Studio Instruments.
  
  
• Multitrack Recording
  You can use Logic Express 8 to record anything from a quick demo to a large-scale commercial project. One-step track setup lets you create and record-enable multiple tracks with ease.
  
  
• Precision Editing
  Audio editing features in Logic Express 8 let you work with power and precision, using sample-accurate tools in the Sample Editor or directly in the Arrange window.
  
  
• Professional Mixing
  Complete your project with powerful mixing and automation tools that meet the demands of any size production.
  
  
• Broad Compatibility
  The open architecture of Logic Express 8 offers enormous creative freedom to musicians by supporting a wide range of professional hardware and software options.

Choose from a wide range of EXS instruments and quickly build sampled instruments and sample libraries using the integrated, redesigned EXS Editor.

Additional Instruments from Logic Studio
Logic Express 8 includes 36 professional instrument plug-ins. In addition to new instruments from Logic Studio—such as Ultrabeat, EXS24 Sampler, and ES2—Logic Express features more than a dozen instruments from GarageBand '08 and a set of powerful synth instruments from Logic Studio.

Synth Instruments
Produce beautiful synth beds and driving bass lines with an array of FM, subtractive, and analog-modeled synthesizers. An impressive range of synthesizer sounds offers even more richness, thanks to new modulation effects.

• ES1
  The ES1, a classic analog-style synthesizer, lets you create earthshaking basses, rich pads, textures, screaming leads, ultrasharp percussion, and exotic effects. The plug-in offers up to 16-voice polyphony; each voice features a main and sub oscillator to deliver the raw sounds that are shaped by the analog ES1 filter.
  
  
• EFM1
  The EFM1 uses FM synthesis to re-create the classic synthesizer sounds of the 1980s. A simple interface provides accessible controls that make tweaking sounds a pleasure, or you can let the EFM1 create its own sounds randomly.
  
  
• ES E
  The eight-voice polyphonic synthesizer lets you mix sawtooth or rectangular waves in a huge variety of tones, with additional controls for frequency and impulse width modulation.
  
  
• ES M
  The ES M lets you design powerful basses and expressive lead sounds straight from the 1970s. Variable selection between sawtooth and rectangular waves and a biting slope characteristic of 24 dB give the ES M its distinctive analog sound.
  
  
• ES P
  Create the characteristic polysynth sounds of 1980s pop music with the polyphonic ES P. In addition to an oscillator, sub oscillator, and filter, the ES P offers an LFO for creating dynamic effects and an ADSR envelope generator for precise level control.
  
  

Guitar Amp Pro lets you play your guitar through faithful re-creations of classic amplifiers and speaker cabinets.

Additional Effects from Logic Studio
More than 70 professional effect plug-ins are included in Logic Express 8—most of which are the same powerful versions included in Logic Studio. In addition to new effects from Logic Studio, Logic Express 8 offers a range of production effects and creative effects designed to meet the requirements of professional musicians.

Production Effects
A range of superb-sounding effect plug-ins makes it easy to add the final polish to your music productions.

• EQ
  Fine-tune your audio production with professional EQ plug-ins like the eight-band Channel EQ, which features a graphical signal analyzer.
• Dynamics
  Compressor includes a linked limiter and five independent circuit types that capture the feel of vintage and modern studio hardware. Professional dynamics plug-ins--such as Limiter, Noise Gate, and Enveloper--further expand your ability to polish your mix or tweak your recordings.
• Voice processing
  Using the Pitch Correction plug-in, you can accurately and quickly tune vocals while preserving articulation and tonal color. Adjust the pitch of drums, speech, and vocal audio using the optimized settings in Pitch Shifter II.

Creative Effects
Transform audio and create shifting fields of sound using advanced reverb, modulation, vintage, warped, and delay plug-ins. Logic Express 8 includes creative effects suitable for a wide range of genres and performance styles.

• Reverb
  Add texture to instruments and vocals using synthesized reverb plug-ins such as AVerb, EnVerb, SilverVerb, GoldVerb, and PlatinumVerb.
• Modulation
  Fatten, twist, and modify audio with Chorus, Ensemble, Flanger, Microphaser, Modulation Delay, Phaser, Ringshifter, Scanner Vibrato, Spreader, and Tremolo.
• Vintage processing
  Get classic sounds like analog warmth or thick fuzz with distortion effects modeled after legendary tube stomp boxes. Vintage Leslie speakers are modeled in the Rotor Cabinet effect emulation, which lets you adjust cabinet type and microphone positioning. Five carefully modulated circuits for Compressor simulate the world's most respected vintage hardware, and Fuzz-Wah combines distortion, compression, and auto-wah effects in a single plug-in.
• Warped processing
  Build classic 1970s sounds with Ringshifter, a combined ring modulation and frequency shifting plug-in. Transpose, robotize, and manipulate the character of monophonic audio with Vocal Transformer. Apply dramatic filter effects with the EVOC20 Filterbank, and twist vocals and instruments with the EVOC20 Track Oscillator.
• Delay
  Use Tape Delay to create the special character and feedback behavior of classic tape-based delay effects boxes. Your creative delay options are rounded out by Echo, Sample Delay, and Stereo Delay.

Channel Strip Settings and Plug-in Settings
The built-in library in Logic Express 8 offers a wide selection of professional channel strip settings and plug-in settings. You can use the settings as is or modify them and save them as your own. You can also create settings from scratch and save them for easy reuse in any project.

• Channel Strip Settings
  Logic Express 8 offers a remarkable selection of more than 790 professionally designed channel strip settings, each combining Logic Express instruments and effects in a powerful plug-in chain. You can find channel strip settings in the library included in Logic Express.
• Plug-in Settings
  With more than 1600 plug-in settings for Logic Express instruments and effects, it's easy to start making music right away with high-quality sounds.

Product Description

Logic Express 8. Powerful music creation. Logic Express 8 delivers the power, precision, and professional toolset of Logic Pro 8--including a redesigned interface that allows musicians to write, record, edit, and mix with unparalleled speed and ease. Logic Express includes all the functionality of Logic Pro 8 except for four high-end professional features--surround, TDM/DAE support, distributed audio processing (DAP), and support for high-end control surfaces. Logic Express 8 comes with an expanded collection of professional instrument and effect plug-ins from Logic Studio, as well as channel strip settings and plug-in settings that allow you to begin making music immediately with professionally designed sounds. Logic Express is the ideal application for professional musicians and producers who want to get into the world of Logic for $199, as well as GarageBand users who are ready to take their music to the next level. A World of Options Logic Express puts a world of creative options at your fingertips, thanks to an open architecture that lets you use a wide range of audio interfaces and many different control surfaces. You can also explore hundreds of third-party Audio Units instruments and effects and incorporate sounds from third-party applications such as Ableton Live and Propellerhead Reason. Logic Express lets you work anywhere at any time, without proprietary hardware. When inspiration strikes, all you need is Logic Express and a Mac to capture your ideas and turn them into music-at home, on the road, or in the studio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Vocoder Sealed the Deal, February 25, 2008

By 

Steve Conslaw (INDIANAPOLIS, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Apple Logic Express 8 [OLD VERSION] (DVD-ROM)

Here we are six months after this product was released, and there's only one review so far. I guess that's because Logic Express's big brother, Logic Studio, gets all the attention. Hey, I'd love to have Logic Studio too, especially with all those Jam Packs, as an amateur "tinkerer", I really can't justify paying five hundred bucks or so.

I decided to take the plunge on Logic Express 8 since it has much of the good stuff of Logic Studio, but it's about 300 bucks less. I'm glad I bought this. It's a lot of fun

I've had it just a couple of weeks so far, and I haven't even scratched the surface of its capabilities. Mostly I've spent my time playing with the EXS-24 sampler and the EVOC-20 vocoder. Vocoder you say? Yep. It's not even mentioned in the description above. I use a simple logitech headset mic and an M-Audio Oxygen midi controller and it works like a charm.

As to the EXS-24 sampler: a lot of people are interested in the sample library that comes with the Express version. As you are probably aware, the express version does not come with the 4 Jam Pack DVD-Roms. The library included with Express has some holes, but it is fairly easy to fill those holes with freely downloaded soundfonts from the web.

You don't get the nice box and documentation with the Express version, but the sequencer and audio recording capabilities are full-fidelity and full function. Honestly, most people are not going to miss the advanced features of Studio because there's enough to keep you busy learning for years.

The thing that made me decide to buy Logic Express 8 now rather than waiting until I had the money to buy Studio was the upgrade policy. You can upgrade to the Full Studio version for $299, which is the approximate difference in price between the packages.

UPDATE 7/2008

Now that I've been playing with Logic Express 8 for about six months, I want to add more depth to my previous comments. It still rates 5 stars for value; however I've run into areas that Apple can improve on the next refresh.

The EXS-24 sampler can lose track of samples if your library gets too large. There are work-arounds. You can split your instruments into separate Sampler Instrument folders, and you can use EXS Manager, a 3rd party software package, but it should be unnecessary.

The ES2 synthesizer sounds nice, but its user interface is obtuse, crowded and behind the times.

There is no paper manual. I'd pay an extra 20-30 bucks to get a genuine users manual with the software.

At least "right out of the box" Logic Express does not "play nice" with most midi controllers. If you want to use the buttons and sliders on your midi controller, you need to program them yourself. Personally, I haven't found the time. I can see why Apple came up with the Soundstage application that it bundles with the Studio version of Logic. Accessing your sounds across multiple built-in synths can take multiple steps in Logic Express. If you are a performing musician, you probably will eventually want Logic Studio.

Last but not least, Logic does a poor job at importing General Midi files. Basically, in this department, Logic is equal to, but no better than Garageband. Logic imports the GM file, converts it to a logic file, and assigns each track to a default instrument that often sounds nothing like the GM standard. The EXS sampler does not have a general midi soundfont. Quicktime, which comes with every mac, does have a good general midi soundfont, and you can play the Quicktime synthesizer from Logic, BUT you can't save presets, and the program does not automatically map the sounds, which makes it pretty useless.

Other than accurate General Midi importing, my wishlist would include built-in vocal-reduction (karaoke) support and pitch-to-midi input.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best I've Used, February 24, 2008

By 

T. Mosbo (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apple Logic Express 8 [OLD VERSION] (DVD-ROM)

I'm an amateur in the audio field and have found Logic Express 8 to be the both the easiest to use and most comprehensive audio software I've used to date. I've used Cubase, Sonar and others in the past and Logic is so much easier to use! Highly recommended!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great upgrade from Garage Band, July 27, 2008

By 

Richard Shaw (La Crescenta, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apple Logic Express 8 [OLD VERSION] (DVD-ROM)

The layout and interface are very Garage Band-like making it an easy to learn application. There are many more options for recording and saving files than Garage Band. Without reading any manual I was able to set up basic one-track recording, record a song, punch-in corrections, loop sections, and do some basic editing for both audio and midi. There's so much more to the program yet I'm happy with what I can do just out of the box!

Garage Band is a great beginner product but if you need to step up into a professional program Logic Express is a good first step. In my opinion, it's easier to begin with than Pro Tools or Digital Performer.