Logic Pro #02 - Audio Interface Setup, I/O Buffer, Latency

hey everyone this is music tech help guy and in this video I'm going to show you how to set up your audio interface with logic pro so first what is an audio interface well the main function of an audio interface is to interface the software in your computer with Hardware devices connected to your audio interface so with an audio interface you can listen to your mixes and logic using speakers or studio monitors instead of just using headphones or the built-in speakers on your computer these also give you monitoring control over your speakers or headphones and they also allow you to connect input devices like microphones or electric guitar or electric bass so you can make audio recordings in logic and many audio interfaces will have multiple inputs and outputs for routing various audio sources all this mixing Hardware I have back here in my desk I use this in conjunction with my audio interface now that's a more advanced feature that I'll demonstrate much later in this series but for now I want to just focus on setting up your audio interface and logic and connecting your speakers but before we do that I want to tell you about the sponsor of this video Boombox if you're a musician beat maker producer or mixing engineer you've got to check out boombox.io Boombox is a new website that allows you to upload your audio files all in one place invite other collaborators producers or band mates and then receive time stamped production notes and feedback I use Boombox every day to keep my mixing and mastering work organized and it really helps me keep all of my feedback from my clients all in one place instead of searching through millions of emails and texts to find my mixing revisions head over to boombox.io to check it out for yourself and you'll get 10 gigabytes of free storage space audio interfaces come in a variety of shapes sizes formats and price points for this video I'm going to be using the apogee Symphony desktop but there are certainly more budget-friendly options like the focusrite Scarlet 2i2 the solid state Logic ssl2 the universal audio volt and many many others budget-friendly audio interfaces are very common these days there are also rack mount options that offer expanded i o and other features usually at a higher price point now depending on the interface you have purchased you may or may not need to install the required software or drivers for the interface for my Symphony desktop I have to install the apogee control app but many interfaces will just work Plug and Play no need for additional drivers but make sure to check the manufacturer's website first before making any assumptions I'm going to start by connecting my Symphony to my Mac over USB then I'll connect my speaker outputs to my studio monitors and I'll also connect a microphone to mic input 1 to test the input if you don't have a microphone you could also opt to plug in your electric guitar or Bass to test the input signal and I'll also plug in some headphones to make sure that the headphone output is working okay so now how do you set this up in logic pro you go up to logic pro settings or preferences remember if you're in version 10.7.4 and earlier this will say preferences and then from here you'll go to audio so under audio devices you'll see two options here output device and input device so what I'm going to do is from my output device I'm going to find the symphony desktop and select that as my output device and you'll see logic also selects this as the input device now one other option I want to point out here is the i o buffer size the buffer size has to do with how audio signals are processed between your computer and the audio interface and when you process or record or mix audio signals digital processing takes time take just recording with a micro phone for example when you sing or play into a microphone the signal that comes out of the microphone is electrical it's analog when it goes into your audio interface it's Amplified by a microphone preamp and then converted to digital which is sent into logic pro as a digital audio recording then you might add other processing or plugins or effects to that signal and then when you press play the signal is sent back out to the audio interface still in a digital format and then it's converted back to analog so that you can listen to it on speakers or headphones this entire round trip process causes latency or a lag or delay in the audio signal now we'll dive into more detail on when to change the buffer size and when to use certain settings but in general when you're going to be recording you want to use a lower buffer size to minimize that round trip latency so you can see that the resulting round trip latency is 17.4 milliseconds at 32 and then if I bump this up to 1024 you can see that the latency goes to 62.4 milliseconds so when would you want to use a higher buffer size well you want to use a higher buffer when you're mixing editing or working on your project basically if you're doing anything other than recording using a higher buffer size also improves your processing power and performance in logic so again in general when you're recording set the buffer size to a lower value when you're mixing editing or doing anything other than recording set this to a higher value so for demonstration I'll set this to 32 samples and then I'll click apply okay so now let's test the input and output of the audio interface let's start with the output so I'm going to click here to open up the loop library and I'm just going to drag one of these audio Loops all of these blue ones are all audio Loops I'm going to drag one of these onto a new track here just like so you can hover your mouse over the bottom of the track here and zoom up the track and you can also use these sliders right here to zoom vertically or to zoom horizontally so let's just zoom out a bit there and let's play this back just by pressing space bar and then to set the playhead back to the beginning you can just press return on your keyboard okay so I'm hearing the loop just fine through my speakers and through my headphones so I've tested the output I know that I'm getting signal there next Let's test the input so I'm just going to select this track hit delete to delete the track and I have a blank audio track here but let me show you how to actually create an audio track now if you have no tracks in your project logic is going to force you to choose a track type but let's say I already have a software instrument if I want to create another audio track what I can do is click this little plus button right here or I can press option command n as a shortcut to create a new track I'll click audio and now I have a blank audio track here I can go ahead and delete this software instrument now what I need to do is tell this track to input signal from input 1 on my audio interface so in order to do this I'm just going to select the track I'm going to click this I button here to open up this little side panel this is the the inspector you can also hide and show the inspector by pressing I and then this channel strip here this is the channel associated with this audio track and this little tab here at the top that says input one that's telling us where the signal is coming from so if I click on that and then go to input you'll see multiple inputs here from my audio interface now my two microphone inputs on this interface are input 1 and input two so remember I plugged my microphone into input one so I'll make sure to select that I'm also using a condenser microphone so I need to turn on phantom power on my audio interface this is usually labeled with a plus 48v button on your interface but when using Dynamic microphones or ribbon microphones you typically do not need to turn on phantom power now there's a couple controls on the track itself we need to be aware of this button here labeled I is input monitoring what this does is it allows you to listen to yourself through the microphones you're monitoring yourself through the input signal on the track without actually recording anything so you can see as I'm speaking the level on the meter here on the track is moving as well as the level on the channel strip in the inspector now if I turn this option off and switch over to the r which is record enable this will essentially do the same thing but now this allows us to actually record our audio signal now one thing I am going to do here real quick is I'm going to click this one two three four option to turn it off that's the count in we don't want to count in for this and then the option right next to it is the metronome or the click what I'm going to do is click and hold on this and I'm going to turn off the click while recording option otherwise we're going to hear a metronome in the background while we record now to record I'm just going to press R to make a quick audio recording and I'm going to check the microphone check testing one two three check testing one two three mic check one two testing one two three and then you just press spacebar to stop now when recording with a microphone you want to make sure that you're wearing headphones and that you've turned your monitors all the way down or at least muted them if you have your speakers playing at the same time as making an audio recording with a mic you're going to get a really nasty feedback loop between the speakers and the microphone so you always have to make sure you mute your speakers and wear headphones when making audio recordings so now what I'll do is I'll turn off record enable and let's see if I can hear this audio recording I just made check testing one two three check testing one two three mic check one two testing one two three okay so it looks like my input's working my output's working and that's how you can set up an audio interface in logic pro don't forget about the sponsor of today's video Boombox I've left links to their website in the video description below I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please leave it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel to see more content like this thanks for the support and thanks for watching

Channel: MusicTechHelpGuy

Views: 65,298

Keywords: logic, logic pro, Logic Pro x, logic 10, logic x, logic studio, studio, recording, audio, music, production, beats, midi, musictechhelpguy, music tech help guy, logic tutorial, tutorial, logic beginner tutorial, Logic Pro tutorial, apple logic, apple logic pro, ultimate guide to logic, ultimate guide, ultimate guide to logic pro, audio interface, audio interface setup, how to set up audio interface, audio interface logic, audio interface logic pro, buffer, buffer size, I/O buffer

Id: 88MWlHBQWC8

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 14 2022