Apple’s Logic Pro X and MainStage get updated with tons of new tweaks

Apple has announced a new suite of updates for Logic Pro X, its professional music-making software. Most notably, there’s a lot of attention paid to expanding the DAW’s smart tempo feature, which is used to automatically detect tempo across the entirety of a project.

Smart tempo could previously only be used when recording audio into Logic Pro X. Now, it can also analyze the tempo of recorded MIDI performances and imported multi-track stems, can follow along with a project’s existing tempo, or be used to define it. The original addition of smart tempo was incredibly useful as it eliminated the need to manually set tiny tempo changes and spend time quantizing entire audio recordings.

Additionally with this new version of Logic Pro X, your sound library can be relocated to an external storage device and a photo can be tacked on to a track or the project notes to help you remember key details. Alchemy, a synth Apple acquired in 2015, has gotten a slew of tiny little adjustments. For example, controls on unused modules are now dimmed and the synth allows numerical editing of parameter values.

There's also a lot of new updates to MainStage, which is sort of a companion app for Logic. MainStage has a lot of similarities to Logic but is for live performances rather than studio use. This version of MainStage has 800 additional loops in different instruments and genres, the ability to add text notes to the bottom of channel strips, and integrates the ChromaVerb algorithmic reverb that was originally introduced to Logic Pro X earlier this year.

These are just a few of the updates that are on the laundry list for both pieces of software. A full list of what’s new for both Logic and MainStage can be found on Apple’s support pages.