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Please don't anybody get me wrong- I've been a DP-lover for a long time (=1/6 of my life) and that's not going to go away anytime soon. But the new comping feature that Logic just introduced has just taken hours and hours off of what is one of my most common tasks. There's no more soloing, muting, draging to other tracks. No tools. You simply highlight the areas you want to hear in the takes you want to hear. For any area you want to hear on a different take, you don't even have to select it a second time. Just click in that area on the other take and the blue "active" selection just jumps over there. Last week I spent 6 hours on one vocal track with a dozen takes. One week later, those days are over. DP and everyone else will have no choice but to implement this I would think- when something is actually such a big time-saver and not just some "cool perk", I frankly don't see how it can not become standard.
EDIT: BTW There are apparantly enough bugs and quirks in Logics implementation of this that it would seem the field is wide open for someone (hello MOTU?) to introduce the same thing but even better! For me, I have it working fine, but I make a duplicate and flatten the comp just in case the comp itself isnt reliable after the project's moved along a few days.
Yes, I've read some rather cryptic info that for as convenient as it is, there are some limits to this with editing-- on some level it appears to be semi-destructive, or the further editing of the comps are locked to the original takes. I'll have to find the forum post about it and will link it here, if that helps shed some light on it.
I just wonder if there isn't a key command when doing this that allows the comp'd track to be edited independently...?
I think it's flexible enough that if you figure out the thinking behind it, it's easy to devise what you want out of it. Other tracks can be dragged into the comp folder, but what CAN'T be done is the takes within the comp folder can't be moved on the timeline. So they are all sort of locked together in time, or "Original Time Stamp", if you will. But soon as you're done comping you choose "Flatten" and it makes the separate regions you're used to in any DAW. In this image I took the comp track, the one on the bottom with the white hairlines, (which is a folder that opens up to reveal all the takes just like image I posted above), copied it to the track above it and did a "Flatten". Now you see it looks just like normal edited regions. At this point you can do anything you want to those, move em wherever:
Incidentally- It creates fades between all those by default, I just deleted them.
You'd mentioned another company possibly making it *better*-- ie: MOTU. What do you find is lacking with this feature in L8 that another company might take to another level-- if not Apple itself in a later version? What are the "bugs and quirks" you mentioned?
You'd mentioned another company possibly making it *better*-- ie: MOTU. What do you find is lacking with this feature in L8 that another company might take to another level-- if not Apple itself in a later version? What are the "bugs and quirks" you mentioned?
Read people complaining about crashing and unexpected stuff- the comp falling out of time. A couple posts called it "unusable". So I thought I'd try it myself, and I created that simple bit above where I'm just saying "one two three four five". I would proceed with caution though if I had a massively long vocal take to comp, until I trusted it a little more. Worst would be you would just lose all your comping and decision making. Its non-destructive, AFAIK. But having to go through a whole comp a second time, decision-making-wise is the kind of thing that could really kill me, especially if it's my own vocal track!
As to what could make it better: Obviously the thing people are going to dislike about it most is the inability to move the takes on the timeline. I mean- you like the way the second word was sung, but want it a few ticks earlier. Instead of deal with it right then while it's on your mind, you have to wait untill you've flattened the comp before you can deal with it. Or take that bit out of the comp and cut it normally. At this stage I think this limitation seems to be the only way they could get it to work. So who knows if someone else could figure a way around it? It seems you should just be able to do this uncommitted checkerboard-style comping to any tracks you want already. However, I'm no programmer...
Siryne wrote:so-can you turn this feature off, and comp the "old fashioned" way?
If you mean can you just have your takes loose in the arrange window, sure. You just unpack the take folder or drag the regions you want from the Audio Bin (equivalent to DPs soundbites list).
I don't understand what's so hard about DP 'takes' management system. It's essentially exactly the same as Pro Tools' Playlist system, and I can comp together takes in no time flat, whether it's a single vocalist or 24 grouped tracks of orchestra. No need for any "muting, soloing & dragging".
I know the new Logic system looks fairly impressive, but personally I'm pretty happy with the current system in DP. And I can't see how the logic system would be much good for anything other than a single instrument (ie. lead vocal).
I still think the best take management system is a piece of paper with take notes on it.
DP 9.52 Mac Pro 10.14.6 RME fireface800. Sibelius. Dorico 4
Incidentally, this "create comp by selecting" feature has been in Logic for awhile. They've simply refined more in this update.
I have been requesting exactly this kind of comping and takes in DP for YEARS. I have described exactly how I would like to see expandable takes and comp-by-selection work in DP in many posts. Essentially, every time one of those "new features" threads comes up this is always at the top of my list. I would pay for a DP upgrade for this feature alone.
My version of it always envisioned a "Make Comp From Selection" command, but Apple has gone one better with the instant comp track that appears above (and the automatic crossfades). Very cool. We need this feature in DP, like, yesterday!
Mr_Clifford wrote:I don't understand what's so hard about DP 'takes' management system.
You may have just hit the nail on the head with that one. It's not *so hard*, and for some purposes it seems that the DP/PT method would be preferred even in L8. New features are fine and dandy until they force the user to work and think like it instead of the other way around.
Babz wrote:I have been requesting exactly this kind of comping and takes in DP for YEARS.
And Babz, we may currently discovering just why MOTU hasn't done anything like this. If it's been around for years in Logic, then MOTU certainly must be at least aware of it (regardless of their degree of interest).
But if it lets you comp tracks only in one way unless you decide to jump through hoops to do it your way, to some extent it must be approached with great caution. To another extent, its caveats may be more of fanfare than substance.
It is a nice feature-- don't get me wrong. I'm just hearing about a lot of cool features that are implemented seemingly at the risk of flexibility.
The comp feature really ought to be the exception to the rule rather than the rule-- else-wise it would be senseless not to have some sort of way to bypass it if Apple hasn't allowed for a disable mode.
the solo tool doesn't work on comped tracks, either, until they're flattened. fwiw...
it's a pretty nifty tool as-is, but i think that they should set swiping comps as an option. they should allow "old-fashioned" chopping up and moving bits around within the comp region, too.
kell
Last edited by kelldammit on Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Feed the children! Preferably to starving wild animals. ASUS 2.5ghz i7 laptop, 32Gb RAM, win10 x64, RME Babyface, Akai MPK-61, Some Plugins, Guitars and Stuff, Lava Lamps.
What I like about comping in DP is, you can drag the ends of the soundbites to recover audio - like when you're trying to get breaths to match up. Say you're using a punched in word, but there was no breath before it. You just move the beginning of that soundbite to the right so you get the breath from the end of the previous soundbite. With the new Logic system, it sounds like that's impossible, assuming 'flatten' in L8 means the same thing as 'merge soundbites' in DP.
"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will wipe out an entire species."
Frodo wrote:The comp feature really ought to be the exception to the rule rather than the rule-- else-wise it would be senseless not to have some sort of way to bypass it if Apple hasn't allowed for a disable mode.
What am I invisible here? I only said twice already you can just do it the regular way if that's what you prefer, ya ol' geezer! Sheeeeeez!!
Nothing is "locked in", it's just like a extra little cookie-cutter assembling area. I've done plenty of comping in both DP and PT and it's likely I'm not as efficient at it as some of y'all but so nevertheless this has just cut the amount of time it takes me down by at least 75%.
duncan wrote:What I like about comping in DP is, you can drag the ends of the soundbites to recover audio - like when you're trying to get breaths to match up. Say you're using a punched in word, but there was no breath before it. You just move the beginning of that soundbite to the right so you get the breath from the end of the previous soundbite. With the new Logic system, it sounds like that's impossible, assuming 'flatten' in L8 means the same thing as 'merge soundbites' in DP.
No flatten means to make it into a bunch of regions that are exactly the way they are in DP where you can move all the beginnings and ends. You can do that part in the comp window already though. What you can't do is grab the soundbite and move the whole thing so it's not lining up the same way relative to the rest of the track as when you recorded it. Don't know if I'm articulating this well. Once its "flatenned", then you can do anything you want with the cut bits. If you look up at my second image, the flatenned one is the one that looks like the bunch of separate regions you normally get when you put a bunch of regions one after the other in the timeline. The comp view has the faux cuts (white lines).
Last edited by zaster on Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
to clarify what zaster was trying to say:
if you have several takes in the comp take object, you can only select what will "appear" in the comped take object. you cannot drag any of the takes to adjust their timing relative to the timeline. you can drag the entire comp object though.
"flatten" just takes the selections you've made in the comp take object and turns them into separate audio regions. as such, each region STILL contains the entirety of its original take, so you can drag the starts/ends, and reveal or hide any audio in that original take. you CAN now drag the regions if you wish to change their placement in the project, timewise, because they're just standard audio regions (i.e. soundbites) at this point.
"flatten and merge" is the same as "merge soundbites", and is also an option in the comp pulldown (on the right of the comp object in the arrange). it turns the whole comp object into a single audio region.
kell
Last edited by kelldammit on Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Feed the children! Preferably to starving wild animals. ASUS 2.5ghz i7 laptop, 32Gb RAM, win10 x64, RME Babyface, Akai MPK-61, Some Plugins, Guitars and Stuff, Lava Lamps.
Sheeeeeez!!
