LAMP 4.7: some first impressions

Joe Albano <joea...>

Hi all; some first impressions of 4.7..

Overall, an excellent update, *many* new features, including lots of little
enhancements not mentioned in the previews, plus various bugfixes
(including some undocumented ones)..

- 4.7 fixes this long-standing bug: in HyperDraw, when there were
discontinuous events (hanging lines), if you clicked in the blue to draw,
these events would be unintentionally interpolated. Now, Logic
automatically places anchors at the end of the discontinuous lines to
preserve all original data.. excellent! :-)

- A bug in the Matrix window, where inserted notes in multi-sequence views
were offset from the insertion point, seems to have been fixed..

- A new bug (buglet?): Can't use the Goto Key Command to goto the same bar
more than once without changing the destination. Example:
- Goto Bar 5: ok;
- Play, then stop anywhere (say, bar 10);
- Goto Bar 5: Nothing happens (The cursor stays put);
- Goto any bar *except 5*: ok, OR
Goto any bar *except 5*, *then* Goto Bar 5: ok
This seems to replace the previous bug, where the SMPTE display wouldn't
update when using Goto to go to bar 1.. This one's worse, but I assume
(hope) it's easily fixed.. ;-)

- The Arrange-window-audio-regions-display-incorrectly-thru-tempo-changes
bug is still there.. :-(

VST instruments: the new features are very useful, in addition to
looping/patch changes/parameter box functions, you can now set up an
instrument that runs thru a bunch of Environment transformers on the way in
to a VSTi object.. :-)

I encountered some odd behavior when I tried to multi-record two VST
instruments (two different VSTi tracks both record-enabled) in both
multitrack mode (different controllers on different incoming MIDI channels)
and layer mode..

- When Logic was stopped, I could only hear one VSTi (the selected track)
as I played on the keyboard, even though both VSTi tracks were
record-enabled (the function worked normally with MIDI tracks, and with
MIDI tracks plus *one* VSTi track). Also, an Environment instrument cabled
to two VST instruments would either only trigger one at a time (top cable?)
or neither (when stopped)..

- When I hit play or record, I could now hear both, and the MIDI data was
recorded & played back as expected (in both modes), *but* while I was
recording, the second VST instrument's sound was delayed by about half a
second or so; it played back in sync however. If I played/recorded from a
single track with a single instrument that was cabled to two VSTi's, both
were heard delayed, but once again in playback they were in time..

So I'm wondering, is this a feature that's even intended to be implemented
at this time? Should both record-enabled VSTi tracks sound even when Logic
is not running, as with MIDI tracks? Could the delays just be a limitation
of the ancient, creaking, pre-G3 Mac I happened to be testing on? Can
anyone else confirm if this works as would be expected (as multi-record
does with regular MIDI and audio tracks) on an appropriately powerful
system? (I'll try it on one some time later this week)..

Other than that, all the new features I tried looked good so far..
Running with the new MIDI engine I _once_ got a MIDI/Audio sync error, but
could not reproduce it (perhaps it had something to do with tempo changes
I'd inserted? There was only one audio/one MIDI track playing at the
time).. After that it seemed fine, although I didn't test with any large
songs yet..

Anyway...

Cheers,
Joe Albano
ROOFTOP PRODUCTIONS
NYC, NY