Apple Loops vs Recycle Loops in Logic Pro 8

A little while ago I started getting option anxiety looking at all of my various libraries and files.

I know this isn’t a bad thing, it’s nice to have the options, but how do you make sense of it all and keep your organization style efficient and productive? This led me to the process of looking at all of my loops and trying to weigh the benefits of using one format over another in Logic. Different programs handle sounds differently and in this post I’m just going to be addressing Logic Pro 8 ( article about Loops in Pro Tools and Sound Organization coming very soon! ).

Apple Loops in Logic

I should start by saying that Logic makes you want to use the Apple Loop format, for obvious reasons right? There are several main features that make the Apple Loop so convenient for production in Logic. The Loops Browser is probably the main thing. The ability to audition files simply by clicking once with the mouse and have them match both tempo and key of the project makes things almost too easy. Then it takes it one step further and allows you to transpose the loop up and down octaves in real time once in the session ( Pro Tools Elastic Audio anyone? ). The organization system isn’t too shabby either. Simply drag a folder filled with AL’s to the Loops Browser and it will either copy them to your hard drive or ask you if you want to use an external drive. The ability to open normal .Wav files in the Apple Loops Utility on the fly from the arrange page, convert them into an AL, and then use it in the session as an AL is pretty handy as well. Especially if you want to make AL’s out of your own recorded instruments, it’s pretty damn fast and seamless. And lastly, from the normal Browser menu you can convert folders of Recycle Loops to AL’s with the click of a button and it’s pretty accurate if the Recycle Loops have been chopped correctly.

Recycle Loops in Logic

With all that good stuff going for Apple Loops it seems like Recycle Loops are going to have a tough time competing….well yes and no. The Recycle Loops have a much larger library and are commonly used across a wide variety of platforms. Chances are you have a lot more Recycle Loops than Apple Loops if you’ve been using digital audio programs for a decent period of time. Obviously Reason users will have the most and then DP and Pro Tools users started to get it going around 2 years ago with tempo matching for imported RL’s. Now in Logic the RL has some pretty cool features that other DAW’s do not, as far as I know. If you import a RL into Logic you get presented with a prompt that looks like this:

And you can choose from these options from the Fix Method drop down menu::

So this can actually be kind of cool, especially if your into chopping up drum loops and throwing the kick and snare on separate tracks for better mix control. The first 3 methods bring in the RL as a folder track containing the chopped regions. Don’t Fix let’s them simply overlap. Crossfade just crossfade’s the overlaps. Now Add Tracks is where is gets interesting for me. If you use Add Tracks then the RL gets imported with the sliced regions on different tracks. Depending on the character of the loop this may well work out to place the kick and snare on different tracks automatically, sometimes you have to finesse it a little. The last 2 options just render the file into an AIF file and can be an AL if you like as opposed to a normal AIF file. The RL will of course match the tempo session but not key. RL loops can also be imported into the EXS24 and Ultrabeat with slices mapped to the keys which is pretty slick for triggering sounds sample style ( check my tutorial store for a Recycle Loops in Logic tutorial very soon! ).

Now for the face off…...

So where could the RL possibly outweigh the AL? The answer is in the Time and Pitch Machine processing side of things. The AL does not like you to do any T&P processing to it, at all. Often times it doesn’t like the other Functions either, like Normalizing etc. If you try you get this message:

There are several workarounds for the situation which I’ll get to in just a second ( please check out my tutorial on Apple Loops in Logic *cough cough* ). What really makes it frustrating is when you like a piece of an AL, like a cymbal sound for instance, and you want to stretch it by length or pitch. This can really disrupt the flow sometimes and makes the RL look much more attractive in that you can do anything you desire to those files. But you get used to it and that’s were that old Offline Bounce comes in handy. You can quickly turn that AL into an normal AIF file by doing a quick Offline Bounce and then just import that file into the session and go nuts. Lately I’ve been doing quite a bit of Time Stretching and am finding the AL to be such a pain on that issue. If you un-check the Follow Tempo box up in the first Inspector drop down menu it will sometimes permit you the ability to stretch but not always.

The Bottom Line

If you’re someone who likes stacking loops and isn’t worried about getting too deep into the processing side of the things then Apple Loops kill. The organization and integration into Logic is far superior for the most part. But, if your one of those people that likes to get into the time stretching aspect of things and doesn’t want to but told they can’t do something, then the RL is better. It all depends on your workflow and how you like to do things, personally I use both and just have tried to be as efficient as possible with organizing the categories of my loops. We’ll get into that in the Sound Organization post.

Thanks for tuning in.

Malcolm

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 10:45 pm. It is filed under Logic Pro 9, blog and tagged with Apple Loop, Offline Bounce, Recycle Loops, Time Stretching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.