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Most of the action in Logic Pro 8 happens in one screen

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Plug it in

Although Logic Pro 8 comes with a massive audio and instrument library, you'll notice there's not been much mention of new plug-ins. However, there are a few newbies, such as Delay Designer: a delay plug-in with filtering and programmable taps. The new Microphaser makes an its debut too.

Various instruments have been updated, including a long-overdue new editor for EXS24, big improvements to UltraBeat (including a larger library of kits), and better multi-output handling performance.

The addition of end-to-end surround capabilities has necessitated a revamp of some key plug-ins, including some surround-equipped instruments (Sculpture, EXS24 and ES2). Both Delay Designer and Space Designer offer True Surround, and a few of the typical audio effects (eg, Surround Compressor) are also available in this dedicated format.

Apple have also added a multi-mono architecture. This combines mono and stereo instances to build a surround plug-in that matches the format of the track, and it even works with third-party plug-ins. The standard interface for this includes a flexible configuration option for grouping channels (labelled A, B and C) the way you want for processing. Additionally, the LFE channel also gets its own settings, and you can bypass each channel from all effects groups. If this sounds a bit complicated, don't worry, as it makes perfect sense in use.

On the downside

Logic remains a large and complex application, and you'd expect there to be a few teething problems, as with any new release. However, we found it to be very stable, and apart from a couple of graphics-related anomalies there's little to moan about.

Even so, some people will undoubtedly be annoyed by changes that don't match their working methods, such as the integrated transport bar, which you can fully customise but not remove. Equally, some may be miffed by the disappearance of the floating extended parameters window, the floating toolbar and the needless renaming of many things.

Is Logic Studio a revolutionary product? Probably not. If anything, Logic's revolution happened years ago, when it gained a multitude of soft synths, studio grade plug-ins, and so on.

What this version does do is deliver all the promise of those ideas in a foolproof package. With its new apps, sounds and low price, it's going to be a tough product to beat. Whether it was worth the wait is harder to say.