free Logic Pro 10.2 update includes Alchemy

[Mark Schmieder]

Surely my problem is basic, but I have traversed the entire menu system in Logic and tried a whole bunch of views, and still cannot find anything that displays the interface to Alchemy that is shown in the Help Center, which in addition has three buttons for Browse, Simple, and Advanced.

 

All that I see is an even more reduced interface at the bottom of the screen, with choices for Transform, Controls, and EQ.

[EscapeRocks]

Mark, I am not a heavy Logic user. I primarily use Mainstage. So I hope I understand your question about Alchemy and Logic Pro X

 

I upgraded both the other day.

 

After seeing your question, I quit MS and opened Logic and created a new blank template. I then simply chose "Alchemy" from the software instrument dialog.

 

Then in the instrument strip, I clicked on Alchemy, and up came the full Alchemy interface just as it does for me on MS3.2

 

Is this what you're looking for?

 

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh58/escaperocks1/alch.jpg_zpswnftfhvu.png

[EscapeRocks]

As an aside to the above, I have spent most of today cruising around in Alchemy in Mainstage. This is my first time being exposed to it.

 

Very cool! It plays very nicely inside MS 3.2. No CPU issues yet, that I can introduce.

[Mark Schmieder]

Thank you. I had tried that earlier, but wasn't patient enough. I expect something to happen right away when I experiment with clicking on something.

 

Performance of Logic 10.2 is HORRIBLE for me so far. Everything takes a seconds to respond, and that's on a pretty powerful computer with tons of memory and all other apps and browsers shut down.

 

Anyway, thanks. I wasn't persistent enough in experimenting whether Apple had broken a GUI paradigm by making a combined control that disguises itself as something other than an action button.

 

For instance, when I hover, it stops saying Alchemy and instead shows three smaller buttons in place of the text.

 

Also, they use another weird GUI paradigm by having buttons that click to expose pop-up menus instead of a traditional menu bar.

 

At any rate, I still can't import, because the File Button's pop-up menu only shows the same three actions exposed in the lower left corner of the main Logic GUI, to make default, clear, or refresh the library. I still don't see anywhere to import stuff.

 

Given the poor performance, maybe I just need to wait a few minutes and other options will start popping up.

 

Edit: Several minutes later, it's still frozen, and I see it is refreshing the library - probably for the first time (Nothing happened when I clicked the Refresh Button in Logic on the left-hand Library panel, so probably the full GUI of Alchemy has to be rendered in order to properly trigger the Library refresh).

 

That used to take an hour or more in Alchemy 1.5, but that was because I owned most of the libraries.

 

If I can wait long enough for this to finish (would be nice if it gave an estimate or a progress indicator), I'll see if I can run a couple of imports, if that option then shows up in the choices finally.

 

I still think it is better than I undid my copies of the old libraries, as the import action will probably load them into the existing categories as that is how Alchemy 2.0 organizes its data (vs. by library, as before).

[Mark Schmieder]

I ignored the warning message that another refresh was running in another instance (I only have one instance in this fresh blank project), and this time it has a blue bar that advances VERY slowly through the text where it says it is refreshing the library.

 

Unfortunately, just as with Alchemy 1.5, it's an indeterminate progress bar that recycles and starts over, and gets "stuck" a lot, so that you don't know if it's doing anything, or if there is a problem, or if it's a software bug and it's really done but doesn't know how to escape somehow.

[Mark Schmieder]

OK, it finished finally. File Menu still only has those three items to clear, save, or refresh the library. So I read the help docs again, to no avail.

 

There's a section of the GUI that appears undocumented, above what they call the Name Bar. It has a circle with a downward slash at the bottom, left/right arrows, a few other controls, and above that a blank field that can bring up a full menu via right click that includes a "Load" function.

 

Interestingly, when I click "Load", it brings up a file chooser that goes to an entirely different part of my directory structure than the Application Support area suggested in GS for depositing Alchemy's old libraries. It is in the "Music" area, just as iTunes and other apps like to deposit much of their data.

 

This area is mostly blank so far, and has a parallel directory structure to the Logic branch within Application Support. The Samples directory is entirely blank here, and the Plug-in Settings directory has an Alchemy subdirectory which has a few directories mostly related to effects vs. library sounds.

 

Not sure if it will help to try moving one of the old Alchemy 1.5 libraries to that location, refresh the library, and see if they show up.

 

The Import function appears related strictly to samples vs. library presets (that may or may not have their own samples vs. using stock ones in core Alchemy).

 

One thing's for certain; I'm sticking with DP as my main DAW. :-) This still is better than my UX with StudioOne, Reaper, Live, and particularly Cubase.

[Mark Schmieder]

I got brave and went back to my initial step based on the GS advice, to see if launching the full Alchemy GUI and refreshing the library will pull in the old 1.5 libraries this time.

 

I did one thing different though, as the instructions were incomplete/incorrect on GS: I stepped one level deeper into the directory structure to copy the presets into Plugin Setting/Alchemy vs. into Plug-in Setting.

 

There are already Atmospheric and Cinematic directories, so I copied their contend to merge with the new Alchemy 2.0 factory set.

 

Note, however, that there are some duplicates. If an ".acp" file you get to skip the duplicates, but if an ".acz" or a ".wav" file you have to exit the copy and manually compare to copy again just the ones that are unique, as the "keep both" option would not be a good idea.

 

Where there is overlap, the same-named sample in Alchemy 2.0 is larger.

[Mark Schmieder]

OK, that was a bit of a PITA due to the manual process on the overlap directories, but it's done, and they all show up in the left side of Logic's Library panel.

 

Inside Alchemy, they don't show up at first; nor does the preset count bump from the factory default.

 

So I ran refresh library again, and likely will have a long wait before I can report back on a few spot checked Alchemy 1.5 patches to verify that this process works correctly and is safe from deletion if there's an Alchemy update from Apple later on (maybe I can lock the patches from editing, but likely that doesn't write-protect the associated files on disc).

[Mark Schmieder]

It was faster than I thought. This means that it doesn't rescan already-scanned presets like Alchemy 1.5 did. I have 8247 after the merge with Alchemy 1.5.

 

I loaded some old Alchemy 1.5 patches, and some ones that use samples that didn't get copied due to already being present in Alchemy 2.0, then tried some of the new patches.

 

Alchemy 2.0 is clearly a far superior product sonically, and addresses the concerns that I and many other owners of the original Cameleon 5000 emulation of the Kawai K5000 Additive Synthesizer had about Alchemy not only being cold but being impossible (literally) to fully emulate many if not most of the Cameleon 5000 patches properly due to a significantly different audio engine, effects engine, and signal path (believe me, I tried for 100 hours at least, and only certain categories of patches ported well).

 

The new engine is warm, like Cameleon 5000's was. This doesn't necessarily translate to patches loaded from Alchemy 1.5 as probably they need to be tweaked a bit and also the actual sampling process might have been part of the problem in Alchemy 1.0.

 

I used Alchemy a lot anyway, but primarily for the same sorts of things I use Absynth and Ultra Analog for: sci-fi effects and atmospheric pads. I try to avoid using the same sound source for too many tracks in a song, due to the typical "stacking" effect that starts to double up any "bump" frequencies inherent to a particular synth's signal path.

[ElmerJFudd]

Useful link.

Undocumented changes in the Logic/Alchemy update.

http://logic-pro-expert.com/logic-pro-blog/2015/08/31/logic-pro-x-10-2-update-undocumented-changes.html#.VeTjg2b3bCQ

 

[ChiefDanG]

For some reason, logic 10.2 crashes on opening for me. I posted on logic help forum and got a few suggestions, but nothing worked. Now my post has dropped to page 4. I reverted back to 10.1.1, hoping 10.2.1 will materialize soon. BTW, the crash log had Alchemy stuff all over it, and there are many posts about performance problems w/10.2. I should try and resist updates with just one decimal point.

[zephonic]

Have you looked at Gearslutz' Logic subforum?

 

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/logic-pro-x/