OTHER WEIRDNESS

Click on HELP/SEARCH HELP and nothing happens! And that ISN'T help in the ENVIRONMENT WINDOW below either! That thing is called a "text fader". It is like a pull down menu with over 100 choices!

MIXER MADNESS , ENVIRONMENT PATCHING AND OTHER MADDENING THINGS

I spent hours one day selecting the patches (sounds) and saved all of the information to the .LSO file (LOGIC song file) but the next day everything DEFAULTED back to piano sounds? Then when I clicked on all of the TRACK NAME buttons the proper patches were played! (The ones that I set up the day before) Obviously don't assume PROGRAM CHANGE information will be sent automatically.

Even though the instructions say DIRECT OUTPUT ASSIGNMENT can override the ENVIRONMENT settings, I found it impossible to play MIDI AFTER CUTTING OUT ALL DEVICES FROM THE ENVIRONMENT WINDOW. The controls in the left hand column won't allow you to select ANY DEVICE after the ENVIRONMENT is wiped clean. You must re-build a new environment , or REVERT back to an older version of the file.

Weirdness with COOL EDIT and LOGIC-RPC

At first I was able to playback and EDIT audio files created with LOGIC using COOL EDIT, but after re-installing LOCIC-RPC I was no longer allowed to EDIT FILES WITH COOL EDIT. COOL EDIT WOULD PLAY ANY FILES THAT LOGIC CREATED, but an "INVALID FILE OR FORMAT" requester would pop up when I would try to COPY a portion of the file to the clipboard.????? It SEEMS that LOGIC allocated a large chunk of memory for itself leaving COOL EDIT 2000 with very little clipboard space. This is because I setup logic for 256megs + (and all I have is 256 megs!)

GHOST FILES

Even though I replaced the audio .WAV files with new ones, and saved the new .LSO file to reflect those changes, each time when I start up LOGIC it prompts me "XXX.wav NOT FOUND" "SEARCH" "SKIP" "MANUALLY" This may be in part because I LIKE TO RENAME MY .WAV FILES! AUDIO-4-04.WAV ISN'T VERY DESCRIPTIVE and even if you NAME your tracks differently, the .wav files will have CRYPTIC NAMES. Just click on "SKIP" or 'SKIP ALL" to get past this.

24 TRACKS OF AUDIO OR NOT?

All of the controls and buttons are in place in LOGIC-RPC to record 24 tracks of 44.1 khz .wav files. BUT.........................

As for the Roland Studio Pack, on MY MACHINE, 8 tracks of 24 / 44.1 recorded AUDIO is maximum for my system using SINGLE MONO .wav files. The LOGIC manual says that I can get 50% more storage utilization by using COMBINED STEREO files, and so I will try that the next time. The largest major factor for recording audio tracks IS NOT CPU SPEED.* (my hardware listed below) It is HARD DISK SPEED. When I finished recording "Plastic World" 3 years ago, I mixed 12 tracks of 16 bit / 44.1 khz .wav files using a 200 mhz Pentium and n-tracks. Today my 7200 rpm UltraDMA HARD DRIVE is running constantly with 8tr / 24bit / 44.1khz. If I move down to 16 bit, I could gain another 50% more tracks. SCSII used to be the fastest, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it would make today . We'll give it 20% better speed to be safe. So here comes the THEORETICAL max for a system recording COMBINED STEREO 16 BIT FILES on the fastest SCSII I CAN THINK OF 8 X 1.5 X 1.5 X 1.2 =
21.6 TRACKS of AUDIO .WAV FILES. I have also taken care to keep the hard disk DEFRAGMENTED and PARTITIONED. In theory PARTITIONING a hard drive should speed it up by limiting the distance that the head moves, but may have little effect on a properly DEFRAGGED partition with CONTIGUOUS data. My TWO 20 gig drives are divided up into C:, D:, E:, F:, G:, H:, I:, J:, K: and L:

I HAVE RECENTLY LEARNED , THAT EVEN THOUGH ONE OF MY HARD DISKS IS SLOWER, IT WOULD STILL BE BETTER TO UTILIZE IT FOR SOME OF THE TRACKS RATHER THAN HAVING THE HEAD ON MY SINGLE 7200 RPM HD BOUNCING ALL OVER. IN OTHER WORDS USING 2 HARD DRIVES TOGETHER IS BETTER THAN USING ONE AT A TIME In the past my 5400 was used only for a backup. I will let you know how well that works out. The calculation above is only for a SINGLE HARD DISK SYSTEM.

As the price of MEMORY continues to fall, it will be possible to PLAYBACK the entire 24 TRACKS from MEMORY in the near future, and that will accomplish the objective of TRUE 24 TRACK 96 KHZ recorder. At least, A FEW GIGS of RAM will be necessary to pull this off, and tracks will still be saved onto hard disk while the work is "in progress" and then "archived"

*Higher microprocessor speed is more important for the users that want to use more of the real-time DIRECTX type effects built into LOGIC. Higher microprocessor speed will also help to speed video. I tried to close as many windows as possible so that the CPU wouldn't be overburdened, but for some reason LOGIC worked better with the ARRANGE window opened? Large rich MIDI tracks running along with the AUDIO will also benefit from a faster microprocessor